Teens of the Late 90s... We were Screwed

Seriously. We were screwed in the teen heart throb department. Looking back at the "hunky" guys that we had to watch every night on the WB and comparing them to the new teen heart throbs that dance across the screen and make teens scream with ridiculous delight, I realize we were screwed. Royally.

First, let's start with the "dreamboat" stars of the WB when we were in high school/early college (this is all my opinion, of course, and if you don't agree with my choices, well, tough):

1) Dawson Leary from Dawson's Creek. Really? This is the guy all the girls wanted to date? Puh-lease! He's such a p-word. I mean, look at him. Give me Pacey any day of the week!

2) David Boreanaz from Buffy and Angel. Okay... he's seriously always going to be a dreamboat in my opinion despite the face that he's kind of a slime-ball in real life. But he was like in his late 20s when Buffy first aired and she was what? 17? Creeper! And he turned into a monster... not really a huge turn on.



3) Any guy from Felicity. Get your act together and stop acting like a douche. The girl freakin moved across the country for you and you don't even ask her to get coffee? I hate you Ben. Noel, you were hot.

4) The Saved by the Bell guys. Okay, TECHNICALLY they weren't super popular when we were in high school, but everyone watched the reruns as preteens and we all gushed about them. Looking back, I'm not sure why.

5) Hanson. Honestly, first time I saw their video I thought the one playing the keyboards was a girl. No, seriously. It took me like 10 more times and an intense discussion with my best friend to finally admit that it was a boy.

6) Jonathan Taylor Thomas (aka JTT). I'm not going to touch that one.








So that brings me back to today. Now, obviously I'm too old to gush over today's teen stars, but I just feel like we did not have any decent teen heart throbs when I was a teenager and the ones we did have were like 30 years old playing 15 year olds. At least today's teen stars are actually teenagers or at least very young adults (Robert Pattinson...).

Why didn't we get teen stars like today's teen stars? I blame Disney. Back in the late 90s and early 2000s their focus was on the older kid demographic and trying to diversify their programming to reach out to several minority groups that may have been turned off to Disney for its lack of ethnic variety. Or at least that's my opinion. My sister was in the older kid demographic so we watched LOTS of Disney back then.

Today Disney has practically cornered the market on young teens with their catchy pretend rock stars like the Jonas Brothers and Justin Beiber and Miley Cyrus. Yeah... I said it. PRETEND. Luckily for teenage girls and us older girls who will one day become cougars Disney tends to churn out young cuties like they're going out of style and eventually launching them into grown up world where it finally becomes okay for us to drool over... I mean, enjoy their performances in movies we actually aren't embarrassed to go see.

As I'm sure you have probably guessed from previous posts, I do have a favorite of the Disney stars that has blossomed into a gorgeous young man who I would feel no shame in dating despite our age difference. Zac Efron. Yes, I've seen all the High School Musical movies... several times each. Thanks to a summer at Viva the Chef and listening to Radio Disney 8 hours a day I now can sing most of the songs from the movies and have sang along to the movies. Should I be embarrassed to put all these things in here? Probably. Do I care? Not a bit. With talent like this, how could you not be interested?



So Zac Efron, after I finish my list of 30 things to do before I'm 30 and when you've grown up a little more, how about we meet up? Have some coffee? Have beautiful babies? That is... unless Pacey Witter shows up.