The Cheetah Girls: The TV Movie That Changed My Life
A fictional singing group took me from my living room to the Berklee College of Music.
By ARIA LANELLE
One summer night, my grandmother let me have the remote control, and two hours later, The Cheetah Girls (2003) changed my entire nerdy, black, homeschooler life. From the jump, this made-for-TV movie about a singing group of four girls at a performing arts high school in New York City hooked me.
The colors are bright, the dialogue is realistic (it was to me), the songs deal with female empowerment, and — except for those velour tracksuits and square flip-phones — pretty much everything holds up for me 12 years later.
The Cheetah Girls was produced by Whitney Houston and Debra Martin Chase, adapted from the book series of the same name by Deborah Gregory. But when you’re eleven-and-a-half, you don’t know or care about any of that.
From the music to the costumes to the “girl power” theme, I was, as you can tell, in awe. I don’t know what I expected, but I do know it wasn’t to discover a career path as a musical artist.
I had generally used singing and performance as an escape from unpleasant things in my life — like the deployment of my mom in Operation Iraqi Freedom or my homesickness for Texas. But when the last strains of the song “Cheetah Sisters” died out, something in me clicked, and I knew I wanted to do music for real. I thought to myself I can do that.
I related to every single one of the girls, and I admired how they did everything themselves. Even their mothers were strong, independent characters like my own mom.
Not to mention, seeing Galleria (Raven Symoné) produce songs for the Cheetah Girls in her bedroom singlehandedly influenced me to become the sole producer of my own songs as an artist. Those skills later helped me get accepted to the Berklee College of Music in Boston right out of high school.
As an adult, it’s easy to look at the super-cheery, you-can-do-it attitude of children’s movies with cynicism, but they shape the world for so many kids, including mine. Movies like that make it okay to think outside of your own box. So yeah, The Cheetah Girls seriously changed my entire life.
Aria Lanelle is an independent singer, songwriter, and producer based in Boston, MA. She recently graduated with honors from Berklee College of Music and has just released her first EP, ULTRAGIRL.
If you enjoyed this, please hit the green “Recommend” button below so others might also enjoy it.
Follow THE OUTTAKE: Medium | Twitter | Facebook
