Walt Disney is a great man. He created The Walt Disney Company, which created a Disney Channel, which turned unknown young girls into well-known grown up hot chicks. Being 22 years old, I’ve lived through the golden age of Disney Channel making superstars, starting with the Mickey Mouse Club. So get google open in another tab in order to give yourself a more visual understanding of what I’m talking about and let me guide you through four generations of Disney hotties.
We start with the Mickey Mouse Club, which produced Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. While Disney didn’t really catapult Spears or Aguilera to fame, they got their start on Disney and really paved the way for the future generations. In reality though, MTV made Britney and Christina who they were. Because Spears and Aguilera were the first hotties of the new generation, they’ll forever have a special place in the hearts of people my age. At their peak, no one could touch these two. Nowadays you just need a couple of bottles of liquor and you can touch them all you want.
Spears went from being America’s sweet heart to the chick who got hitched for 24 hours in Vegas to shaving her head and attacking cars with umbrellas to doing a reality show with a back up dancer to actually kind of sort of getting a grip on her life. At her peak though, if you said that you didn’t have a crush of Britney Spears, I’d call you a liar because most guys I know would have given their left nut to spend 20 seconds (because that’s all they’d last with one nut) with Ms. Spears. She may not have aged gracefully but she seems to have turned her life around at the age of 29 after showing her vagina for the majority of the decade. It’s been a roller coaster ride for Britney but she’ll always be the pioneer of tween pop.
As for Aguilera, I always thought she was hotter than a young Britney (give me Genie In A Bottle Christina over Baby One More Time Britney any day of the week) and up until recently, she had her life better intact. After going through a Dirrrrrrrrty phase, she settled down with a Jewish terrorist, stayed relevant by putting out a CD and movie every year or so, and had a child. Then she went off the deep end a little bit by getting divorced and turning into a drunken mess. She seems to doing better now as she’s one of the judges on one of the thousand talent shows that my parents watch.
Through all the ups and downs in the careers of Britney and Christina, no one can deny that they paved the way for future Disney stars.
The next generation includes Lindsay Lohan and Hilary Duff, better known in some circles as “Who Aaron Carter was playing when he wasn’t playing Shaq.” Also in this group is Hayden Panettiere, who is forgotten by some but not by me.
Lohan starred not on Disney television, but in Disney movies like Freaky Friday, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, and Herbie Fully Loaded. She went from being a legit movie star and the hottest red head maybe ever to the biggest tragedy in tween history. Like Spears, she had a huge meltdown that involved her turning to drugs and alcohol and banging dudes in the stairwell during rehab stints. There was once a time when people would have paid millions of dollars to see her well developed chest but nowadays if you just google her name, you can see as much as Lindsay as you want, including her fire crotch. Things haven’t really improved for Lohan as she’s spent most of the year on house arrest, partying it up by herself although I’m sure some random junkie was allowed conjugal visits. Lohan is only 25, even though she looks like she’s going on 50, so maybe there’s hope for her yet but thinking she’ll return to her Mean Girls peak is like thinking thinking LeBron James will ever be better than Michael Jordan.
Hilary Duff is our first real Disney Channel star and success story. If you don’t consider Lizzie McGuire to be one of the greatest TV shows of this generation, then I’m not sure we can be friends anymore. I’m not counting the movie, because the movie sucked and was nothing more than a cash grab, but the TV show was awesome. Duff was never the star that Lohan was but at least she turned out normal, except for that period where when she smiled she looked like The Joker. Maybe Hilary never had a great CD or an extremely successful movie on her own but she’s had a nice little career and has now settled down with hockey player Mike Comrie. Granted Comrie is 30 years old and pretty much done in the NHL but happiness is what matters, right? Hilary hasn’t screwed up her life with a terrible reality show, her vagina isn’t all over the internet, and she’s never been involved in a major scandal.
Many don’t consider Hayden Panettiere a Disney star because she’s most famous for being the cheerleader that needed saving in order for the world to survive but she got her start with Disney in movies like Tiger Cruise and Ice Princess. Hayden has had a nice little career for herself, minus the mistake of dating Wladimir Klitschko, who has to be the most boring date ever based on how he fights. And we all know that how you fight is how you date, which is why Urijah Faber is such a pimp. Hayden has had a nice little career and might actually be the winner generation in the eyes of males because she’s not a mess and she’s not married. Now if we could just get her to stop dating athletes and start dating writers.
When they were all Disney stars, Lohan was always in the spotlight, Duff was in the background, and Panettiere was never really associated with them. Things haven’t changed much nowadays but I’m sure that sits just fine with Hilary and Hayden.
The third generation consists of High School Musical stars Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale, along with gal pal Aly Michalka.
Hudgens rose to fame through High School Musical and by dating her co-star Zac Efron. Her big break came when nude photos were released on the internet, showing the entire world (or at least those with computers) something that many high schoolers never saw and definitely not those who starred in musicals. As with any celeb that gets caught up in a “leaked” nude photo scandal, Hudgens saw her star rise faster than it would have if she just stuck to making musicals. To her credit, Hudgens didn’t turn her newfound fame into a crappy reality show and instead turned it into some crappy movies. Ok, Bandslam was good, but Beastly and Sucker Punch sucked. She also dumped Efron and started hanging out more with Brittany Snow, which gained her even more fans.
While Tisdale also gained fame through the High School Musical series, she actually got her start on Disney Channel’s Suite Life of Zack & Cody. Looking at Tisdale on that show then compared to how she looks now and you can see a difference. I’m not fan of plastic surgery because I believe that God creates you how he wants you and you shouldn’t go against God but Tisdale did get a nose touch up in order to fix her deviated septum so she could sleep better. So if this surgery ends up keeping Tisdale alive for an extra 5 years then who am I to complain? After her Disney career ended, Tisdale starred on Hellcats, which only lasted one season despite being the greatest show in the history of the CW, at least until Rachel Bilson‘s new show.
Aly Michalka is kind of caught in the middle of generations two and three as the Disney show that made her famous, Phil of the Future, started just as Lizzie McGuire ended but ended just as High School Musical started. But since Michalka is better linked to Hudgens and Tisdale and this is my column, she’s in the third generation. She was the geeky looking girl on Phil of the Future who really started to fill out after the show went off air. Of all the hot chicks in the movie Easy A, Michalka was the hottest. She starred in Hellcats alongside Ashley Tisdale and the fact that it was canceled after one season makes me hate everyone who didn’t watch the show. How you people could deny me my weekly Michalka and Tisdale fix should be a punishable offense. Michalka is my favorite of all the Disney lookers, mainly because she follows me on twitter.
Besides Hudgen’s nude photo scandal, which she’s completely recovered from, the third generation of Disney hotties has been relatively clean. They’ve all gone on to have success and they all appear to be happy in life. So good for them.
The current generation consists of supertsars Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, and Selena Gomez as well as the underrated Debby Ryan.
Cyrus is the star of this group thanks slightly to her father being Billy Ray Cyrus, partially due to the success of Hannah Montana, but mainly due to a series of scandalous photos. Cyrus was pretty much destined to be a star from the first episode of Hannah Montana. A regular girl during the day and a pop star at night, what young girl wouldn’t consider her a role model? After Hannah Montana she’s starred in some movies that I’ve never seen and put out some decent CD’s that I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve listened to. Cyrus grew up before our eyes and went from the goofy country bumpkin Miley Ray to the very hot and mature Miley Cyrus. She seems to be doing well now, avoiding scandals, touring and still dating her co-star from that movie to prove it wasn’t just a publicity stunt.
Lovato was the under the radar female of the Cyrus, Gomez, Lovato trio until spent some time in rehab for personal issues. She started out as a Disney movie star with Camp Rock and Princess Protection Program before getting her own show, Sonny With A Chance. Arguably the most talented, at least musically, of the trio, Lovato’s career took a nasty turn when she started dating Joe Jonas. You would have thought that she would have learned after Taylor Swift‘s episode with him but I guess you gotta learn things on your own sometimes. Lovato has rebounded though, seemingly over her personal problems and tweeting hot pictures of herself to prove that she’s no longer worried about her imagine. And we love you for that Demi.
If you want to know how to handle fame at a young age, just look at Selena Gomez. She actually got her Disney start with some cameos on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and Hannah Montana before getting her own show, Wizards of Waverly Place. Like every other Disney star, she turned a TV career into a music career, releasing a song earlier this year titled, Who Says, which never fails to put a smile on my face. She’s also had starring roles in Ramona & Beezus, a movie that I enjoyed, and Monte Carlo, which might be the greatest movie of all-time. Above all though, Gomez has avoided scandal, unless you count receiving death threats for making out with Justin Bieber a scandal. I have high hopes for Ms. Gomez and believe she will do well in her career as long as she continues to be BFF’s with Taylor Swift.
Compared to the previous three, Debby Ryan is unknown. She’s the only one of the three who hasn’t starred on her own show, instead rising to fame as a secondary character in The Suite Life on Deck. That will change this fall though when she stars in Jessie on Disney Channel, which is sure to be must-see TV in the Lambert household. She’s also been the star of a Disney Channel movie, 16 Wishes. Although she may not be in the spotlight as much as Cyrus and company, that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t deserve my love. Plus, as we’ve learned in this column, being the “forgotten” one of the generation is not a bad thing.
The fourth generation is slowly coming to an end but it’ll be remembered as the new boom for Disney channel. Miley was the superstar of the group thanks to the some “leaked” photos but Lovato and Gomez are big stars and I believe that the future is bright for Debby.
Along with every star mentioned in this column, there’s also others that I failed to mention like Brenda Song, Bridgit Mendler, Chelsea Kane, and more. Whether you watch Disney Channel or not, there is no denying that the company has created plenty of hotties of the years to keep teenage boys busy for plenty of hours. Thank you Mr. Walt Disney.
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