Well, it’s official. Disney Adulting is over. At least, according to The Cut.
Last week, the publication shared an article by Lindsey Bales titled “Good-bye, Disney Adults; Hello, Disney Cool Girls.” It chronicled what it dubbed a new era of Disney fandom, a growing community that puts fashion and vibes first.
The “Disney Cool Girl,” associated with vintage clothing, thrifted pieces, upcycled designs, and more understated references to Disney, contrasts with the rather stereotypical Disney adult, often associated with Mickey ears, Loungefly bags, character merch and conspicuous expressions of fandom. The goal is to dress stylishly in ways that wouldn’t look out of place beyond Main Street.
Bales describes herself as a “closeted Disney adult,” someone who enjoys the parks but not the reputation that comes with the label. Through the piece, she celebrates the cool girl label as a way to express that enthusiasm without the embarrassment traditionally associated with being a Disney adult.
The article quickly drew backlash from Disney fans and creators, including some who were interviewed for the feature.
Critics took issue with the suggestion that one kind of Disney fan was somehow cooler or more deserving of recognition than another. Several creators featured in the article also pushed back against its framing, emphasizing that Disney fashion has always been about individuality and that fans shouldn’t have to fit into separate categories to be celebrated. Some alleged that their comments supporting the broader Disney adult community had been omitted or taken out of context. The article also faced criticism for overlooking the longstanding contributions of Black and brown creators to Disney fashion, presenting established forms of self-expression as something newly fashionable.
None of this was to my surprise.
As a proud Disney adult myself, I’ve been watching the rise of the Disney cool girl label across social media for more than a year. While the fashion itself is hardly new, the distinction between Disney cool girls and Disney adults certainly wasn’t invented by The Cut.
Many of the related TikToks don’t frame the Disney cool girl as merely a fashion trend or subcultural identity. Instead, they position her in relation to Disney adults.
“Explaining to my non-Disney friends that I’m a Disney cool girl not a Disney adult.”
“Disney adult but in a cool girl way.”
The Disney cool girl is positioned as the fandom equivalent of the girl who’s “not like other girls.” Her appeal isn’t simply that she has a different aesthetic, but that her aesthetic supposedly distinguishes her from the kind of Disney fan outsiders already consider uncool. Fashion may be celebrated as the Disney cool girl’s centerpiece, but the language surrounding the identity suggests something beyond personal style — a distinction between acceptable and embarrassing expressions of enthusiasm.
The Cut made the consequences of those distinctions explicit, leaving even some of those who embraced the label uncomfortable and causing mass division in the Disney parks fandom.
There’s a familiar pattern here, and it extends well beyond Disney fandom. When an identity carries social stigma, people face a choice between challenging the assumptions attached to it and managing their proximity to those assumptions. The latter offers an immediate form of social protection, where instead of asking outsiders to reconsider their judgement, you convince them that their judgement doesn’t apply to you. But there’s a consequence to seeking acceptance on those terms. You may escape the stereotype without doing anything to weaken its hold over everyone else.
To understand the appeal of the Disney cool girl, you first have to understand what it means to be called a Disney adult. In her piece, Bales reflects on the Tumblr-era enthusiasm and millennial optimism times of the past when Disney fans were simply Disney fans, enjoying the parks, sharing their interests and connecting with others who loved the same things. Somewhere along the way, however, the Disney adult became a punchline — a recognizable caricature in mainstream internet culture from those even outside of fandom spaces.
The Disney Adult became a shorthand for someone considered immature, obsessive or excessively attached to childhood nostalgia. It’s not uncommon to come across people saying there’s “something seriously wrong” with Disney Adults, that they “need to be studied.” The lack of being able to understand the appeal of enjoying Disney Parks is treated as a character flaw the fan must possess. And the stigma is so salient on the internet that you don’t even have to know anything about Disney fandom to understand the joke. In fact, when you don’t understand how Disney parks operate or the experiences they create for guests, it’s easy to mistake ordinary features of those experiences for evidence of strange or inappropriate behavior.
We saw a good example of what that ridicule can look like during the viral “Peter Pan girl” controversy earlier this year. I have a lot to say about that entire discourse cycle, which unfolded while I was busy planning Fangirl Forward NYC so I didn’t get the chance to fully write about it. None of my thoughts about that cultural conversation are positive.
There was something particularly absurd about watching strangers accuse a woman of being parasocial while obsessively dissecting a character performer’s facial expressions, assigning him thoughts and feelings, and constructing elaborate narratives about his discomfort as though they knew him personally. The very behavior they were condemning was being mirrored in their supposed defense of him. The irony was that a woman publicly ridiculed for her alleged obsession with a Disney performer inspired the internet to develop an entire subculture around obsessing over the two of them. A few weeks ago, I watched as people dressed up as the pair for Halloween.
The crucial thing that frustrated me about this controversy, however, was how quickly it became less about critiquing bad fan behavior and more about judging the idea of being a Disney Adult. Questions about boundaries gave way to a much broader ridicule of adults who visit Disney parks, meet characters, and enthusiastically participate in experiences designed for guests of all ages. The underlying judgement wasn’t simply that this particular fan had gone too far. It was that grown adults shouldn’t be engaging with Disney in the first place.
That made it much easier to ridicule Peter Pan girl, because her behavior was being viewed through a stigmatized lens before her behavior was even being judged. She became a stand-in for everything mainstream culture already found embarrassing about Disney adults, giving people an opportunity to indulge in a stigma that existed long before she became its target.
There are legitimate conversations to be had about boundaries and appropriate conduct within fandom, but when those conversations become an excuse to ridicule the broader community, the behaviors actually worth addressing get lost in the process. Disregarding a character performer’s boundaries is not the same as camping out for a parade or getting emotional during the fireworks. Yet these behaviors can become lumped together as evidence of the same supposed problem with Disney adults. When that happens, criticism stops being about what fans actually do and becomes about the kind of people we assume they are. That’s not how we move fan culture forward.
With all of that in mind, I understand the emergence of the Disney Cool Girl.
When that’s the caricature constantly waiting for you outside your community, it’s not difficult to understand the appeal of distinguishing yourself from it.
The stereotypical Disney adult wears her enthusiasm openly, whether that means getting emotional during the fireworks, being the first to buy new merch or pins, or eagerly meeting characters. She’s often highly strategic about her park experience, rather than going with the flow — camping out for the best parade spots and trying to squeeze as much Disney magic into a single day as possible. These are the kinds of behaviors that have become shorthand for the supposed immaturity and obsessive attachment associated with Disney adults. The embarrassment, it seems, isn’t simply in loving Disney, but in loving it too visibly, too earnestly and without the self-conscious distance that makes such enthusiasm socially acceptable as an adult.
The Disney cool girl, by contrast, is associated with a more nonchalant attachment to the world of Disney. She’s there for the vibes, incorporating vintage pieces into her outfits, finding obscure corners of the parks for photos instead of park icons and embracing the Disney experience without appearing quite so consumed by it. Interestingly, many of the Disney cool girls I've encountered online appear to be annual passholders. As a passholder myself, I know how much that changes your approach to the parks. When you can visit regularly, there's less pressure to squeeze everything into one day. What looks like a more casual relationship with Disney may actually be the result of being deeply immersed in it.
Of course, there’s nothing particularly calculated about any of these preferences. Disney fans have been expressing themselves through fashion and photography for years. It’s the language used to distinguish one kind of fan from another that reveals something more interesting. The desire to dress a certain way doesn’t require an explanation to outsiders, but the insistence that doing so makes someone a Disney cool girl rather than a Disney adult suggests an awareness of the stigma attached to the latter. So while this label may be intended for outsiders, its consequences don’t stop at the community’s borders. In trying to escape a stereotype, fans can end up reinforcing it for everyone who doesn’t fit the supposedly more acceptable alternative.
I think what I find myself questioning is the impulse to make those comparisons in the first place. There's a difference between saying you prefer vintage Disney fashion over Loungefly bags and making a point of telling people you're not the kind of Disney adult who carries one. One describes your personal taste, while the other uses someone else's perfectly harmless enthusiasm to establish what makes yours more acceptable. You can genuinely engage with a fandom differently without needing to position yourself against the people who don't engage with it the same way.
Which brings us back to The Cut.
“Good-bye, Disney Adults; Hello, Disney Cool Girls” functions as an announcement that one kind of Disney fan is being replaced by another, one supposedly more fashionable, tasteful and socially acceptable. The very stereotype that made some fans uncomfortable identifying as Disney adults became the basis for celebrating their alternative. The Disney adult became the undesirable comparison against which the Disney cool girl could establish her appeal.
For Disney fans who never identified with the cool girl label, the article introduced an uncomfortable separation within a community they understood themselves to share. Why was one expression of Disney fandom suddenly being celebrated at the expense of another? At the same time, some of the creators associated with the Disney cool girl identity objected to the suggestion that their fashion or enthusiasm made them superior to other fans.
I believe those objections can be entirely sincere. I don't even fully believe the language distinguishing Disney cool girls from Disney adults was necessarily intended to establish a hierarchy within the community or to put other fans down. It was probably a way of explaining one’s relationship to Disney to people outside it. But language intended for one audience can have consequences for another. Especially when the very audience you’re trying to reach actually does see it, amplify it, and then present it back to your community as a hierarchy that puts down the fans you didn’t mean to offend. That cycle explains much of the discourse that played out over the past week.
This is a pattern that extends well beyond Disney. In trying to prove we’re the exceptions to the stereotypes attached to our communities, we can end up validating those stereotypes at the expense of the very people who share our interests. If we want to change how fandom is perceived, we have to demonstrate that change in how we treat one another.
I live in the Facebook groups with the moms asking you to rate their Lightning Lane order and complaining about the Disney rash, and I live for the aesthetics and thrifted outfits that fill up my Instagram timeline. To me, these aren’t opposing communities. They’re different expressions of the same enthusiasm.
Disney cool girls are Disney adults, too. They shouldn’t have to abandon their vintage outfits, just as other Disney adults shouldn’t have to abandon their Mickey ears.
Instead of amplifying exceptions, we should be questioning why the stereotype exists in the first place.