When I was four, I would get in my bikini with the tutu skirt bottoms and lay stomach down in the shallow part of my lake, making the twin neighbor boys make waves around me and splash water in the air while I dramatically belted “Part of Your World” from Ariel the Little Mermaid. I wish I could say that was the worst that it got, but that would be a lie. Sometimes when it was really windy in the fall, I would go stand at the top of the hill over looking my lake and sing “Paint With All the Colors of the Wind.” Yeah, I was that girl. Girls of my generation would eat, breath and sleep Disney Princesses growing up. If you were born between the years of 1989 and 1999, it was a standard that you knew every song by heart and had underwear with the days of the week and the Princess’ faces on them. We were that serious. Naturally, we learned everything from these girls. This may explain why the four most obnoxious things that us 90s girls do were in fact learned from the Disney princesses themselves.
Why It Takes Us 7 Days to Fall in Love
No thanks to Myspace and Xanga, most of us girls found love at the very ripe age of 10. My best friend would change her AIM screenname biweekly according to who she was in love with at the time, like, “Jakes_Gurl2245” or “ILuvFox7”. Before the days of Facebook, this is how we would keep up on each other’s relationship status. We would meet these boys under the bleachers at the REC basketball games and then suddenly we were talking monogamy…listen, girls of the 90s didn’t mess around when it came to making things official. Sure, it may make us seem a little crazy, but we learned it from the best. One week locked in a dungeon with an enormous, hairy man and Belle became Mrs. Beast. Then there’s Ariel- less than a week on dry land and the girl was having a wedding on a giant yacht. Snow White didn’t even know who her prince was until she woke up to the guy making out with her…that sounds peculiarly similar to how a lot of our relationships start these days.
Why We Are Drama Queens
Crying is just part of our persona. Nothing makes a point well proven like a well staged out cry. This is the only logical explanation as to why you always find girls today crying in the bathroom stalls of the bar with their best friends. When it comes to break-ups, turn on the water works. When our parents said we couldn’t do something or have something, boom. Instant tears. Even when I was little, I would get in fights with my sister over the last Little Debbie Fancy Cake and storm into my room, tossing myself onto my bed like a rag doll- it was all a part of my act. I have never seen a Disney movie without one of the Princesses getting all emotional and crying theatrically in the dark woods or in some giant castle decorated with gargoyles. Remember Ariel’s little scene when King Triton wouldn’t let her on land to see Eric? Two words-Drama. Queen.
Why We Are Always Having Sing-A-Longs
Singing is just one of those things in girl world that I will never be able to explain to anyone, simply because I still don’t even understand it myself. We have a song for everything. I mean everything. My friend sprained her ankle falling down the stairs because she was sprinting, just so she wouldn’t miss our rendition of “Die Young” by Ke$ha…we take our sing-a-longs very seriously. This dedication started at a very young age. If you say that you have never sat on your mom’s giant oriental rug in front of the fireplace singing “A Whole New World,” you are lying. I just don’t believe you. That is a right of passage for our generation and obviously the beginning to our amateur sing-a-long careers.
Why We Have Such High Expectations for Boys
John Smith set the stage for what we expect from our boyfriends. First of all, that hair…talk about flow. Why do you think we get all hot and bothered when we see men like Chris Hemsworth from Thor? From an early age, we learned the value in a man with a full head of beautiful hair. Painfully good looks set aside, the Princes taught us exactly what to expect from boys. I mean, I’m no expert on dating, considering I have never even been out on a formal and public date, but guys these days just don’t live up to Prince standards. Until a guy sings me a song about how perfect and beautiful I am and takes me for a ride on his magic carpet, I’m staying single.
There you have it. Proof that every dramatic and ridiculous thing us 90s girls do was picked up from the most famous ladies of our generation. For all of these things, I blame the Disney Princesses. Â