At What Age Does Being Obsessed With Disney Stop Being Endearing?

If Love Island is good for anything, it’s encouraging heated debate. While typically the same ones come up each season – toxic masculinity, we’re looking at you – this winter Love Island has given us a brand new topic: adults who love Disney. That’s right, SiannIse Fudge’s obsession with Disney has caused quite the online commentary over the past week – causing us to ask the question, at what age does loving Disney stop being endearing and start being, you know, a bit weird?

Fudge herself is 25 and hasn’t held back in professing her love for the media conglomerate, even including two references to it in her pre-Love Island interview. ‘My friends call me Princess Jasmine,’ she said when asked to describe herself. Later, she said her ideal first date would be ‘pizza and a Disney film’.

In the first episode, we were privy to her hugely problematic comparison of the only Asian man, Nas Majeed, to Aladdin after the two engaged in a conversation where they both professed their obsession with Disney. Since then, she's done it even more, comparing every man she’s interested in to a Disney character, and telling her date last night that she only travels to Wales for the Disney store.

Now, we’re not here to judge. If you’re a grown woman who loves Disney, more power to you. But you know who IS here to judge? The entire internet. ‘Siannise needs to stop this whole Disney shit, it ain’t cute sis,’ one viewer commented online, to the tune of near 4,000 likes. ‘Siamese thinks loving Disney is a personality trait she thinks she so quirky lawddd,’ another added to thousands of likes too.

But what is it about people who obsess over Disney that irks others so much? It’s worth noting, and we're not including Siannise here, that not all adults are neurotypical – which is defined as having a brain that functions and processes information the way society expects – and thus adults that are neurodivergent may have an affinity to things we loved as children at any age.

However, there are still many neurotypical adults who obsess over Disney. ‘There are a few grown women in my office who have their desks plastered with Disney memorabilia and spend thousands on trips to Disneyland every year and I just can't get my head around it,’ says Amy*, 25 from Manchester. ‘Are they trying to recapture some childhood memories or create ones they never got to experience? Or are they just buying into the societal norm of women needed to be cute princesses? Either way, there's something about it that makes me uncomfortable, probably to do with the wider infantilisation of women in our culture.’

According to Dr. Mark Duffet, author of Understanding Fandom: An Introduction to the Study of Media Fan Culture, adults can become obsessed with things they associate with positive experiences of childhood. ‘Fandom that starts in childhood can be associated with high levels of brand loyalty, or at least brand awareness, in later life,’ he told The Awl.

In fact, in 2019 Disney overtook Apple in a study into brand intimacy, finding that millennials and women overall had the strongest emotional connection to the brand – mostly due to the nostalgia from the films, parks and merchandise.

So, perhaps Siannise just got taken on too many Disneyland Paris trips as a child? If so, we can’t really blame the woman for having a happy childhood. Although, if she wants a chance at that £50k grand prize, she might have to tone down the constant references to win over the general public.

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