I think it’s pretty awesome that former Disney Channel star Demi Lovato is calling the network out for using eating disorder jokes on its shows. The 19-year-old took to Twitter last week to complain about a joke on the TV show Shake It Up in which a character says, “I could just eat you up—well, if I ate.” She followed with a tweet saying:
Disney’s PR team responded quickly, promising to pull the Shake It Up episode and an episode of another show, So Random, that contained an eating disorder joke. “We hear you & are pulling both episodes as quickly as possible & reevaluating them … It’s NEVER our intention to make light of eating disorders!” the Disney media relations twitter account tweeted back to Lovato. Case closed? I guess. But Lovato’s tweet about That’s So Raven and Lizzie McGuire got me wondering: Have Disney’s teen stars gotten thinner over the years?
So I rounded up photos of some of some of Disney’s most famous teen stars—starting with Mouseketeer prototype Annette Funicello and going up through the girls of Shake It Up. It’s kind of hard to tell because teen styles were so different (and less revealing) back in the day, but it doesn’t seem to me like Disney teens of yore were significantly bigger or differently-shaped than today’s teen-girl stars. The network’s pubescent actresses—from Haley Mills to Keri Russell to Miley Cyrus—have always been fairly thin, yet healthy looking. But see for yourself (and let us know your thoughts in the comments!).