Back in August, Lord Voldemort told me Hilary Duff was pregnant.
Sorry, not Harry Potter’s Dark Lord, but Twitter’s Dark Lord. @Lord_Voldemort7 is one of Twitter’s cynical voices, loves magic, hates vampires, points out typos, knows pop culture and has 1.5 million followers, but follows no one.
His was the first reference to the pregnancy on my Twitter timeline, where I follow roughly 300 tweeters. Then, sure enough, “Hillary Duff” was trending at the top – except she spells Hilary with one L.
But, Lord Voldemort didn’t call her Hilary. He stuck with his pop culture wit and tweeted, “Lizzie McGuire is pregnant. I bet Raven didn’t see this one coming.”
At first, I was shocked. Then I remembered she got married and, with that, I was excited, but it didn’t seem like anyone else was. Other tweets mentioning “Lizzie McGuire” had a negative attitude to her expecting a little no-name.
Why can’t we all be happy that a childhood star-turned-singer (well, kind of) is in a happy marriage and expecting a baby? Acknowledging her legitimate pregnancy is scary because it shows our age. We could be married and could be expecting our first child.
Most of the celebrity mom-to-be news that I actually see and half remember involves stars either adopting or attempting the single mom thing – or there’s a scandal involved. She may be young, but she is married and we know who the daddy is.
Out of curiosity, I looked at all the tweets that mentioned “Hillary Duff.” Thousands of users had copy and pasted: “Hillary Duff is pregnant, Wizards are done, Zack & Cody graduated, Miley revealed her secret. My childhood is over,” sending it out as their own to all their followers, so they could mourn together, double Ls and all.
Then the tweets started hitting my timeline with those 115 characters, not copy and pasted, but retweeted citing the original source, agreeing with the writer in proper Twitter etiquette.
But, here’s the thing: Disney wasn’t mine or any other now almost-college-graduate’s childhood. We were ’90s Nickelodeon kids. Our childhood was “Rugrats,” “Hey Arnold,” “Doug,” “Clarissa Explains it All” and “All That” – shows my little brother (a December 1995 addition to my family), wishes he’d seen in their prime.
Disney was our pre-teen years. Yes, we watched those shows, but our parents would come into the TV room and ask, “Aren’t you a bit old for that?” Which, we probably were, but how many of us are currently glued to the ABC Family line-up including “Secret Life of the American Teenager,” “Pretty Little Lairs,” “Make It or Break It” and “Switched at Birth”? We’re always too old for what we watch.
I’ll give you “Lizzie McGuire,” “That’s So Raven” and “Even Stevens” into our childhoods. We were pushing 13 and 14 at the time when those shows stopped airing, but we did grow up with them. They were only a bit older than us, so we could relate to the characters and plot lines.
According to the Internet Movie Database’s (IMBD) original airdates, Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana), only pulled off her wig to reveal her secret just before last Thanksgiving. Zack and Cody graduated high school with Northeastern’s incoming freshman class on May 6, and the Wizards of Waverly Place only just ended this summer.
We are all 17 to 23 years old, isn’t this our “collegehood?” Shouldn’t that tweet have read, “My life as I knew it yesterday is over?”
Even if Duff’s pregnancy ended your childhood, can’t you get excited for the “bad” TV that will frame little-no-name’s “childhood”?
Hilary Duff, who will turn 24 at the end of the month, and ex-Pittsburgh Penguin husband Mike Comrie officially announced on Aug. 14 – their one-year anniversary – that they are expecting a little one this winter. I wish them all the best. After all, I did grow up with her. And, if she was actually one of my friends, I’d be happy for her. So, join me?
– Sarah Moomaw can be reached at [email protected].
