Every time I dwell on the unavoidable environmental collapse predicted to take place in our lifetimes, our children’s lifetimes, or best case — in our grandchildren’s lifetimes, I think about Lizzie McGuire. It is a bizarre association, but real nonetheless. In particular, I think about Episode 16 of Season 1, “Obsessions,” in which Lizzie becomes an environmentalist. I do not mean this as a joke, but as a literal description of my mental associations. I will often find myself wondering exactly how many years left humans have on this planet and next thing I know, I am picturing Lizzie McGuire in a burlap sack (or as condescending, anti-woke Miranda describes it, “burlap-chic”) scolding her teacher for giving them a quiz on single-sided, instead of double-sided paper. When her teacher asks if the discussion can wait until after the quiz, Lizzie responds with absolute exasperation, “No, the environment can’t wait. We’re running out of time!” Despite this scene serving as the episode’s comic turning point, after which Lizzie is sent home to take a nap and to realize that she’s been taking on far too much in her crusade to “save the world”, I can’t help but feel it captures the sense of absolute existential dread we feel when we attempt to face the scale of environmental disaster on the horizon.
Why, despite the deluge of other materials I’ve encountered regarding the current environment catastrophe, does Lizzie McGuire’s laughable attempts at environmentalism evoke my strongest memories and associations? In an excellent essay dissecting the philosophy of Radiohead’s pop music, the critic Mark Grief argues that popular culture and mass media are revolutionary not to the extent that they spur thoughts we haven’t already experienced, but in the way they allow us to re-experience feelings we’ve already had in a context in which we can more readily access and preserve them. He writes, “Pop does, though, I think allow you to retain certain things you’ve already thought, without your necessarily having been able to articulate them, and to preserve certain feelings you have only intermittent access to, in a different form… in which the cognitive and environmental are less divided.” Radiohead, in particular, he argues is able to capture the low-level dread of being in an intrusive technological dystopia by incorporating the sounds of technology and short, interrupting samples of broadly appealing lyrics that communicate both our displeasure and our urge to become part of the conforming mass. And he chooses to inspect Radiohead partly because of its ubiquity in early 2000s culture.
Similarly, in 2002 half of all female tweens (the marketing term for the age group from 9 to 14) had seen at least one episode of Lizzie McGuire in the past month. And similar to the way Radiohead captured and reflected the anxieties of adults, Lizzie McGuire captured and reflected the anxieties of millennial tweens. In a fawning review of the Lizzie McGuire series written in 2002 (and no doubt sponsored by Disney), the New York Times describes the series’ appeal as consisting of, “not only Ms. McGuire’s affable character, but her tart-tongued animated alter ego, who articulates the kind of real thoughts — like the uncertainty of a school-girl crush or the embarrassment of buying a first bra — that tweeners may be loath to express themselves.” Enhancing the similarities, the creators of Lizzie McGuire reportedly introduced the animated Lizzie McGuire alter ego as a way to present authenticity to a digital generation who was accustomed to digital representation and frequent interruptions in thoughts via their frequent communications on instant messaging apps. And just as Radiohead’s lyrics flirt with defying authority and enacting the temptations of a ubiquitous mob (“This is what you get when you mess with us” or “We can wipe you out anytime”), Lizzie McGuire flirts with defying the cool kids while simultaneously enacting the conformist impulses of the cool kids. Thus, she can simultaneously be bullied by Kate (who we all know is a bra-stuffer…) for wearing weird or uncool clothing while simultaneously being the face of the fashion line, Limited Too, whose Lizzie McGuire line frequently sold out and heavily dictated the style of middle schoolers in the early 2000s.
As a result of its ubiquity, precise channeling of tween anxieties, and its oscillation between insider/outsider impulses, Lizzie McGuire was uniquely situated to allow tweens to explore and retain thoughts they had held all along without necessarily being able to articulate them. This is why, I suspect, many women in their 20s still have strong memories of the episode in which Lizzie confronts her mother about wanting a bra. The episode, through its channeling of one of the most common anxieties of teenage girls, provided a template by which tweens could better approach their own obscured thoughts about maturing so as to be better able to articulate them. I would even wager the episode served as the impetus for a nontrivial number of parents and daughters to have their first conversations about whether it was time for their girls to wear a bra.
But unlike Radiohead’s lyrics’ obscure meanings, episodes of Lizzie McGuire have always been straightforward about their message and usually end with a character tritely paraphrasing the lesson the young viewer is supposed to synthesize. For example, in “Between a Rock and a Bra Place,” after Lizzie yells at her mom for treating her and Miranda like babies as they shop for their first bras, she eventually realizes she needs her mom’s help and apologizes for her tantrum saying, “I guess the adult thing to do sometimes is to ask for help.” And just like that, Lizzie McGuire successfully captures tween anxieties and converts them into aphorisms of how to be a good person. Of course, the showmaker’s ideas of how to be a good teenaged woman (or more accurately a good, non-controversial, marketable, teenaged, suburban, white woman) diverge in many ways from what we would advise or expect from our daughters — but at the very least, the show is transparent in the ideology it preaches.
Considering that the scene of Lizzie McGuire screaming at her teacher for not double-siding papers as she contemplates the world overheating has quite literally haunted my psyche for over a decade, I decided it was worthwhile to revisit the episode and attempt to better understand the implicit message about environmentalism Lizzie McGuire forever lodged in my subconscious.
The episode begins with Lizzie and Miranda reaping praise from their teacher, Miss Moran, for their work in the school’s food drive. Intoxicated with her success, Lizzie tries with varying levels of success to get the people close to her involved with new environmental projects. She decides her first project will be asking the Digital Bean to recycle, for which her parents praise her heartily, until that is, she asks them if they can also sort and recycle their garbage at home, to which her parents respond with the condescending indulgence they would have offered to an estranged relative trying to get them to join their latest multi-level marketing venture.
While they’re at the Digital Bean, a fellow environmentalist student comes over to thank Lizzie and Miranda for not treating the Earth as though it was an infinite resource (her tone mirrors the pretension in Hermione’s infamous “Wingardium Levioooosa”), until she realizes Lizzie and Miranda are eating burgers, at which point she condemns them as “meat eaters” and runs off. Lizzie now decides to become a vegetarian.
As she comes into increasing contact with the horrors of the current environmental reality, Lizzie becomes more and more dedicated to the cause. Her recycling stems in part from her understanding that there is more plastic in the ocean than the size of Texas. But when she sets off to donate her unused clothing (which seems like a fairly innocuous idea if also wholly unrelated to environmentalism) her father asks her if maybe she’s taking on a little bit too much.
Soon after, it appears that all of Lizzie’s “allies” are letting her down. She discovers her parents haven’t actually recycled, to which her mom responds she does enough by sorting the laundry. Lizzie’s animated alter ego is shown checking the temperature of the Earth only for the thermometer to explode. Then, she discovers that Miranda is wearing a leather jacket, even though Lizzie is a vegetarian, to which Miranda responds, “then don’t eat my jacket!” And when Lizzie complains that trash will soon be high enough to block the sun, Miranda expertly retorts, “At least I’ll have my jacket to keep me warm!” The two are now in a proper spat.
Finally, in the episode’s climax, Lizzie is handed a quiz that she refuses to take because the quiz was printed single-sided instead of double-sided. She confronts her teacher about the environmental impact of the quiz’s double-sided printing, but Miss Moran asks if it can wait until after class. Lizzie is exasperated, Miss Moran was the teacher who had encouraged her to become an environmentalist in the first place and now she won’t even listen to her critiques. When asked if it can wait until after class, Lizzie responds, “No, the environment can’t wait. We’re running out of time!” Here again, we’re treated to an animated Lizzie falling into a trash tornado as she feels fully overwhelmed by the scope of the crisis and her inability to contribute meaningfully. When Miss Moran sends her home to take a nap (a reaction from a teacher which has been elicited by exactly no one ever), Lizzie’s parents take her aside to talk about the importance of not spreading oneself too thinly. They offer some sage advice, including “You’re taking on too much, you can’t save the world by yourself,” and, “If you really want to make a difference, what you have to do is pick one thing and go for it. And get some help too.” Lizzie realizes her mistake and how she’s alienated her friends and takes a nap before heading back to school to watch Gordo take on Trudgeman in the slow-bike race.
Ostensibly, the aphoristic takeaway from this episode should be that in order to be effective we need to focus on one thing and one thing only. But the sequence of events in the episode also reveal a tremendous amount about how the average affluent American has justified the environmental abuse reaped upon the Earth over the last couple centuries. First, from the way Lizzie transitions from being praised for her work on hunger to her transition to environmentalism as well as the other environmentalist’s obvious and dislikable pretension when she discusses the cause, the episode heavily implies that environmentalism is a showy fad meant for social credit rather than anything approaching a coherent philosophy of social change.
Second, the show hints at climate change and Global Warming, but rarely makes it explicit, like when the animated Lizzie takes the temperature of the Earth only for the thermometer to explode; instead, its focus on the environment tends to be in terms of trash and waste. Lizzie still seems to grasp the apocalyptic potential of climate disasters, as she expresses numerous times her concerns about the Earth trending toward becoming an inhabitable place for humans, but again it is more because trash might pile so high in the sky it blocks the sun, than that gas and oil companies and large American corporations have been proactively emitting greenhouse gases. It is telling that her response to the crisis is in terms of littering rather than pollution. According to Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, the American anti-littering campaigns began as a coordinated effort from large corporations to shift the blame for waste and pollution from conglomerates to individuals. The campaign was largely successful and many states passed regulations that punished individual litterers, who represented a tiny sliver of America’s waste problem, rather than the corporations at the heart of the problem. Similarly, from watching Lizzie McGuire, one would get the sense that the biggest environmental problems arise from individual littering rather than systemic pollution.
Third, the characters make it clear that Lizzie’s asks are ridiculous, even though they consist of 1) recycling/saving paper and plastic, 2) cutting up soda cans, 3) donating unused clothing, 4) not eating/using animal byproducts (the first three have largely become second nature in large part thanks to the environmental movement, while the fourth has become increasingly common and respected thanks to the same movement.) But most of all, the show reveals its true environmental ideology in the conclusion.
The episode closes with Lizzie apologizing to her friends and telling them that her parents were right, she needs to stick with one thing to make a real difference. And then, after a full episode of watching Lizzie protest about the conditions of our environment and how little time is left in the growing ecological crisis, Lizzie chooses her singular cause to be STRAY FUCKING DOGS. Apparently her parents not only refused to help her with her environmental projects, they also failed to help her pick a cause that actually applies to the problem with which she’s been grappling for the entire episode. And while it is ridiculous to expect an early 2000’s Disney show to maintain continuity, Lizzie’s embrace of saving stray dogs is never mentioned again in the entire series.
Thus, even though the episode’s explicit message is we need to focus on one thing and one thing only to be effective, its implicit message is that we need to focus on one thing and one thing only in order to ignore the existential anxiety generated by the sheer magnitude of the environmental crisis AND that the one thing on which we choose to focus need not have anything to do with the systemic injustice that we witness but can be literally anything at all that can take our minds off the horrors of Global Warming’s rapidly approaching manifestations. In fact, it seems they prefer her cause to be something that doesn’t make them feel guilty for the ways they’ve been complicit in the crystallizing crisis. (You almost get the feeling, Lizzie’s parents would have been relieved if she decided to spend her time writing critical reviews of old TV shows rather than contributing meaningfully to environmental efforts.) More, the show implies that a cause is more important for how it affects the individual’s ability to feel good about themselves than for the impact that it might have on the world. It’s this same philosophy that causes the showmakers to paint all of Lizzie’s environmental efforts as praise seeking and the other environmental student’s commitment to the cause as a way to feel superior to other students.
We can call this particular ideology American Nihilism: the belief that nothing that we’ll do will matter in the face of an ever-growing environmental crisis that we ourselves caused. During brief moments of lucidity, American Nihilists might blame individuals for their bad habits, like littering too often or not cutting up six-pack rings, but because these are the actions of millions of individuals rather than a few corporations, the problem appears intractable — not least because a key value of American Nihilism is that because nothing we do will matter, it is rude to force someone to look at the impacts of their ingrained oppression. This is why we are meant to sympathize with Lizzie’s family and friends as she continues to raise environmental objections to their every day activities. Ultimately, according to American Nihilism, we are better off distracting ourselves than dwelling in the existential anxiety caused by America’s violent and oppressive history because our efforts are meaningless anyway. We might as well be happy as we await the end.
And here, I have finally discovered why this scene haunts me when I think about ecological disaster. When I feel nauseous about my complicity in the environmental crisis, my brain conjures up Lizzie at her most ridiculous, in full burlap-sheik yelling about double-sided paper so as to excuse my inaction and to validate whatever distraction I choose to allow me to look away. When I briefly became a vegetarian, it felt like I was just yelling about double-sided paper, and when I decided to reduce my water usage, it felt like I was just yelling about double-sided paper, and when I encountered principled individuals making compelling arguments about the need to reform our actions before it’s too late, it felt like they too were just yelling about double-sided paper.
Albert Camus once said the only real question in philosophy is suicide. Perhaps the only real question today is ecological suicide. And whether we are prepared to allow it to occur. Perhaps it really is inevitable. Camus preferred to live staring into the gulf between the cold, unfeeling world and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. I contend it is better not to look away from the gulf between the growing cyclone of environmental catastrophes and the wild longing for the ability to meaningfully improve the world before it’s too late.
To illustrate his absurd ideal, Camus provided us with a reimagination of the Myth of Sisyphus: Sisyphus was required to repeatedly roll a boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down and for him to have to start the process all over again. It was long considered a torturous punishment. But Camus imagines Sisyphus differently. Despite his absurd and impossible task, because Sisyphus understands the truly absurd nature of his reality and lives in scorn of it rather than in submission to it, Camus imagines Sisyphus happy. And even as he bears the weight of his boulder to head back up the mountain, Camus sees him as joyous because “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.” He concludes, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
While I am rather unlikely to be able to shake this Lizzie McGuire scene when I think about environmental disasters (especially now that I’ve devoted 3500 words to it), I do think it is possible to repurpose the scene from its original mockery of environmentalism and activism into something more suitable with my beliefs. To this end, I leave you with the Myth of Lizzie McGuire:
Lizzie was born into a world in which more likely than not the environmental damage accrued before she would even graduate college would exceed the “point of no return”, after which point global temperature increases would become self-enforcing and unstoppable. Nonetheless, she, if just for a brief period of time, had the courage to look the crisis squarely in the face and grapple with its terrifying conclusions. While the show’s American Nihilism implied that she was unwell and was dealing with a mere obsession, I respectfully disagree. It is at the moment when Lizzie refuses to participate in the overwhelming global system of environmental oppression that I choose to dwell. Lizzie sees a mentor of hers willfully wasting precious resources and cannot stand the sight of her own complicity any longer. Will her protest prevent Global Warming? Hardly, but what protest has?
“We’re running out of time!” she screams to a room full of indifferent students and a sleeping Gordo and gets sent home to take a nap. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a tween’s heart. One must imagine Lizzie McGuire happy.
This is Jeremy Mann’s second contribution to Tart. He’s a maximalist writer who’s not totally convinced that a small and witty string of words can accurately describe either him or really anything at all, but can’t help but make an overwrought and meta attempt anyway.
