[Shake It Up theme song instrumental]
The 2000s tweens fashion was marked with an abundance of color, mismatched print, fur, sequins and lots and lots of layering. Even though some outfits may have been better than others, there was one particular studio that was pumping out some of the most iconic 2000s looks. That studio is none other than Disney.
[Disney Channel Ribbon Music]
In the 2000s and early 10s Disney had a variety of shows that gave us fashion icons like Hannah Montana, Lizzie McGuire, Raven Baxter and London Tipton. Sometimes the fashion choices worked and sometimes it didn’t.
JESSICA REPLANSKY: Seeing like, clips from Shake It Up where I kind of cringe a bit, but I also give myself grace because you know it was the trends of the times.
That was Jessica Replansky. Replansky was the costume designer for multiple Disney channel shows, including Shake it Up and Austin & Ally.
REPLANSKY: The aesthetic I kind of developed on that show was very like, layered, which I thought was very interesting. But so we were laying a lot of different clothes, like so even if like one of the actors was wearing a crop top, they would have like another top like a tank top underneath. But we made it in a way that looks like cool and part of the style.
This aesthetic is so identifiable that people are now poking fun at the style on TikTok. Cathryn Wagner, a former costume designer for Disney who worked on some of their most popular shows told Vogue about the importance of color in a show’s wardrobe. At the time live action shows were essentially competing with cartoons for the attention of children. Hence Wagner chose to utilize brighter colors when styling Disney actors. But in a way it worked, Disney Channel was at its peak popularity between 2010 and 2015 with shows like Wizards of Waverly Place, Jonas, Shake it Up, Hannah Montana and many more. According to Statista, the channel averaged about 1.96 million viewers in 2014. Thus the clothes became a part of a formula in crafting a Disney show
REPLANSKY: Disney was very, you know, they had very strict rules about what was appropriate to show for girls, or I mean, kids in general, but I feel like specifically girls. And so yes, we definitely had to be very mindful of like, not showing too much midriff, making sure the skirts weren’t too short, heals and all that.
Which in hindsight makes sense, the bright and fun clothes matched the mindset of a tween picking out an outfit during that time. It also was an age-appropriate version of the trends happening in the women’s fashion scene such as the mini skirts which explain the love for jeans or leggings under the skirts. Adding a bit of modesty to protect the young actors who would at that time were working at ages ranging from 12 to 14.
However sticking to this formula doesn’t allow for the actors’ clothing to mature with them, thus at the age of 18 actors had to adhere to the same modesty standards they had as a tween. Especially since the outfit standards weren’t constricted to their on-screen characters but also to the actors’ personal lives.
Highlighting another aspect that contributed to the standards of Disney, purity culture.
SARA MOSLENER: By the 1990s, there is a large-scale cultural fear around sex, and it was a couple of things. One, you have the HIV-AIDS crisis, the other thing that was perceived as a problem in the 80s and 90s was teen pregnancy. And so both of those things together created a real fear.
That was Dr. Sara Moslener, faculty at Central Michigan University in the Department of Philosophy, Anthropology and Religion. Dr. Moslener has been studying evangelic purity culture for almost 15 years.
MOSLENER: The SBC started to threaten to boycott both Disney and ABC. They had millions of people, who just, stopped going to Disney and were like committed to boycotting because it was this family values issue and especially Disney, which is supposed to be this family-friendly place, right? They were changing the definition of family that the SBC was and other evangelical Christians and other conservative Christians were not willing to accept.
The SBC stands for the Southern Baptist Convention, and at the time was gaining more power as Disney started to lose money. So Disney began to buckle.
MOSLENER: Disney, you know, shifted, was very much influenced by the SBC and purity culture and under pressure embraced this as a way to market their young stars.
One of those marketing strategies was purity rings. Almost every Disney actor in the 2000s wore purity rings and Disney was able to use their stars proclaiming their chastity as a way to create a new wave of profitable teen stars. Joe Jonas told James Corden during Carpool Karokee:
JOE JONAS: The next thing you know it’s the Jonas brothers and their purity rings and people ran with that forever and it was a running joke. We just kind of decided at one point, like look this is not who we are.
The purity ring became a part of the Jonas Brother’s identity. Nick Jonas shed more light on his feelings about the way the media discussed the rings in an interview with Harper’s Bazars saying, “The question should have been: Is it appropriate for people to talk about a 16-year-old’s sex life? It’s absolutely not—and it wouldn’t necessarily fly today.”
Going back to fashion, Disney’s commitment to a vivid and playful wardrobe wasn’t merely a strategic move to capture the audience’s attention; it was intricately woven into the fabric of modesty standards. They incorporated layers and vibrant colors into the prevailing fashion of the time, as the primary trends of the 2000s were deemed too scandalous to align with Disney’s family-friendly image. Replansky suggests a more individualistic approach to style, emphasizing the importance of personal comfort and aesthetic appeal.
REPLANSKY: If a person sticks to what works for them and their body and likes what they are just drawn to aesthetically then their style will be good.
For WNUR News I’m Karrah Toatley
[Shake It Up theme song instrumental]
