| So when we went to Disneyland yesterday, there was a bit of an interesting experience in the security line. I saw a woman ahead of us wearing a dress made of fabric that had pictures of various Disney canine characters. I don't know if it had all of them, but it had a whole bunch, including some of the more obscure ones like Little Brother from Mulan. My first thought when I saw it was, "Oh, that's cute." And my second thought was, "I bet she doesn't even know who all those characters are."
Now I've been on Facebook enough to know that that kind of gatekeeping is Not Cool, and feeds into the "fake geek girl" myth. But now that I've been on the gatekeeper end of things, I can see where the sentiment comes from. Of course, in some cases, I'm sure it is a matter of wanting to show off how smart you are by actually being able to, for example, name all the characters on the dress.
But on the other hand... Well, I used to really like Disney, and now I don't so much anymore. I still like all the old movies, when I can get over my bitterness enough to watch them and not think about how they don't make movies like that anymore. But I don't like what they're doing now, and it's easy to assume that it's because they stopped doing whatever they were doing to make me like Disney, and they started doing whatever they're doing to be Cool now. And back when I liked Disney, I would have loved to know lots of people who also liked it, and we could wear cute dresses and talk about all the characters and do all the fun stuff together. But back then, Disney wasn't Cool, and liking it made me not cool. Not that I was ever that interested in being cool, but I did want to share my love with other people, instead of talking to them and having their eyes glaze over.
So I guess part of it is, "Oh sure, when Disney was good it wasn't cool, but now that it's awful, everybody loves it!" Then I start wanting to prove myself or something, I guess. In my defense, I didn't actually go to her and start asking her questions like she was a fake Disney fan. In fact, I'm pretty sure she's a legit Disney fan, whether she recognizes all those characters or not. At any rate, it was a good opportunity to reflect.
Today I'm thankful for getting our work quota done, having time to play Kingdom Hearts, having some Pirouette cookies to look forward to, having pretty piano accompaniment for Silent Night, and having a new Hatsu*Haru deadline. |
