Disney Channel Girls Are Flakes

I love Disney Channel movies. Yes, they're super cheesy and lacking in plot sometimes. But I like them because they require very little investment, they make me laugh, and there are some really good ones.

But as I've gotten older, I've noticed a few things about the girls in these movies. Especially in some of the most popular ones. The girls are total flakes. Let's look at few of these characters and I'll show you what I mean.

Gabriella Montez

The first target on this list, and the reason I started noticing this trend, is one half of our High School Musical ship- Gabriella. As a young teen watching this movie, I thought Gabriella was the coolest and Troy was a lame looser always messing stuff up. But as I got older, I realized it was actually the opposite.

Troy is a good, hard-working boy who does make mistakes. But he's faithful to Gabriella even when Sharpay is up in his face. He's always there to support Gabriella. He realizes his mistakes and works to fix them.

And how does Gabriella repay him? She walks out on him in Every. Single. Movie. As soon as their relationship starts having problems, she leaves. She overhears him saying stupid stuff to his friends and refuses to do the callbacks. Troy struggles over the summer with Sharpay dangling opportunities in his face and she breaks up with him. She decides to go to a college in like Arizona and leaves without telling him.

Gabriella keeps coming back, but Troy should really consider if he wants to be with a girl who leaves whenever things get tough. It's not the best base for a relationship.

McKenzie (Mack)

Mack from Teen Beach Movie is our second example. You don't see as much of this in the first movie, but it really comes out in the second movie. She and Brady to go back to school as a couple and immediately hit troubled waters. He's laid back and she's academic. He wants to surf, she has a million extracurriculars.

And rather than discuss is like an adult, she wants to call it quits. Even though Brady is trying so hard. He wants to make it work, she doesn't. You even see glimpses of this in the first movie when he wants to enjoy their time in Wet Side Story and she doesn't like that.

Addison Wells

Addison from Zombies also has a tendency to only like her relationship if it benefits her. I know part of the theme is standing up against zombie-ism, but she never seems to try to make it work with Zed. She cares more about her quest to fit in than supporting him.

Look at the third movie where she learns she's the map to Utopia and up and leaves him without any apparent regret. Sure, she's sad, but not enough to think for more than two seconds about not leaving.

In Conclusion

I feel like writing female characters in Disney Channel movies has two major issues.

1) It doesn't give kids watching good role models. This ties into the whole problem of our current society. But I think especially in kids/teen movies, we need to highlight good and bad as that and give them characters to look up to.

2) It reflects badly on girls. We don't want to be known as flakes. Always walking out on relationships. Sure, there are plenty of times the boys in Disney Channel movies flake out, but I feel like it's less noticeable.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk on Disney Channel girls. Does it have a point? Not sure. But thanks for reading my ramblings.

Have you noticed this trend in other places? Are there other girl characters in DCOMs that do this? Tell me in the comments.

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