I Don't Care If Adults Like Toys. I Care If They're Too Scared to Make a Phone Call.
Am I really going to defend Disney adults? Yes.
Adults who like childish things are easy to hate. Bill Maher made fun of young people who groan about “adulting” so much that he earned a comedy special all about it. The “this generation is so childish and selfish” accusation was lobbed at millennials, and just in time for us to become cringe chopped uncs, Gen Z is getting it. And if you want to get a really easy laugh, just make a joke about Disney adults.
And I get it. Having spent my twenties in the tech world (more specifically, the gaming world of San Francisco) I saw plenty of adults who appeared to be stuck in suspended animation. I worked at one company that, on day one, insisted we all identify our favorite dinosaur. This particular company included an adult ball pit, where one particularly sweaty guy would work all day before eventually getting fired for sexual harassment (I wish I was making this up). All of my male coworkers spent their free time playing video games, and my female coworkers were typically involved in some kind of juvenile media fandom. Everyone was writing a vampire novel.
There are summer camps for adults. We now even have preschool for adults to nourish their “inner child.” And just this week, a young woman went viral on Twitter for “infantilizing” herself (Twitter’s words, not mine) by accepting an unconventional birthday gift from her boyfriend—his credit card hidden inside a star-shaped magic wand for a shopping spree.
While some people thought it was cute, other people thought it was, well, time to grow up. Also, let’s just be honest: some people were jealous. A few posters suggested that with the genders reversed, we would all see how silly it was. They asked: can you imagine a grown man prancing around with his girlfriend’s credit card inside a plastic light saber? (I actually can imagine this, easily—I’ve lived in San Francisco, after all—it’s the “girlfriend” part that would baffle me.)
But I think people are focused on the wrong “evidence” of the infantilization crisis, and this poor woman caught strays. Yes, some young people need to grow up, and I am troubled by the extension of adolesence, but adults enjoying “childish” media or toys isn’t really the problem. I am hesitant to even use the word “childish,” considering one of the women involved in one of the hydrae of the magic wand discourse who was slammed for “self-infantilization” and “internalized misogyny” was just showcasing her pink iPad her husband got her as a birthday present. Would they have cared if he bought her an iPad…in a different color? I mean, what are we doing here?
Put simply, I don’t care what adults enjoy. I only care about what they believe they can’t do.
