When I was fourteen, I was a little bit in love with Sabrina Carpenter. More specifically, I was in love with Maya Hart, the character that Carpenter played on the Disney sitcom “Girl Meets World.”
I wasn’t in love romantically; I was obsessed with her character and wanted to be just like her. Maya represented everything that I wanted to be. I had recently moved to the New York City area, and through her eyes, I was able to fall in love with my new city.
She was witty, someone who didn’t quite fit in but carved her own path. I was an angsty thirteen-year-old whose mother had passed away a few years prior, and I hadn’t yet found my place at my new school. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the fictional character of Maya Hart was my friend, but I saw myself in her when I was desperate for companionship.
When I found out that Carpenter was topping the US Billboard 200, I felt betrayed. It didn’t fit that this child star could now represent a global-pop-sex-symbol. Carpenter was still, in my mind, synonymous with Maya. When her global number-one singles “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” started circulating on the internet, I gnashed my teeth. How dare this celebrity, my old friend, be allowed to change?
Clearly, my relationship with Sabrina Carpenter was a parasocial one. Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships where one person extends emotional energy while the other party (the persona) is completely unaware of the other’s existence. For girls navigating the perils of middle school, parasocial relationships with celebrities afford “friendship” and help them address their own budding autonomy.
Maya Hart was that for me. I was a lonely thirteen-year-old, watching pirated episodes of “Girl Meets World” after school, hiding under my desk with my laptop as though I were guilty of something. I picked up my sense of humor from the show, and a better sense of who I wanted to be. I loved the messy love triangle between Riley, Lucas and Maya. I found Riley — the straightforward, rule-follower — insufferable, and I adored Maya in all her chaos.
The relationship between adolescent girls and their chosen companions is intense. As a teen, I wasn’t interested in romance: I was searching for companionship and female role models. Trading smiles with female classmates, asking each other with our eyes: Do you want to choose me?
Often, I would experience an all-consuming rush of love for this near-stranger. My friends’ moms were the most frequent victims of these sensations. I often liked my friends’ moms more than I liked my friends themselves. All I wanted was to be near mother figures, a connection which is easily traceable back to the passing of my own mother some years prior. Maya Hart helped fill this void. We were of the same age, roughly, but she seemed so wise. I was struck by her maturity, something I had failed to find in friends and classmates.
Eventually, I finished the show, and moved on with my life. High school began, and it would have been social suicide to admit to anyone that I had just recently devoured a kid’s show. Carpenter faded from my mind, and until I heard “Espresso,” I had forgotten about her entirely.
On my first listen, I was taken aback. A celebrity changing is uncomfortable because it shatters the consistent image of the person that we fell in love with. I felt betrayal when I realized that Sabrina Carpenter and Maya Hart were not the same person, and my comfort character was just that: a character. It was painful to realize that this person, who had meant so much to me just a few years prior, could go behind my back and grow up, just as I had.
I recently watched a “Girl Meets World” highlight reel on YouTube, and it seemed joltingly juvenile. Carpenter looked so young, and the jokes that I remembered as hilarious weren’t all that funny. In the wake of its termination, a slew of criticisms came out against the show. Millennials argued that the show was not as good as its precursor, “Boy Meets World.” Others felt that the writers had “Disneyfied” the show too much; the mature themes fell flat due to the limited script.
Just like that, I had grown out of my relationship. Like a breakup, perhaps, I had to let the idea of the person go. I had to accept Carpenter as a global pop superstar, not a Disney child star.
This process was jarring, but it happens all the time — people often grow out of parasocial relationships. Adolescent girls grow into women and these one-sided bonds collapse; we become more aware of who we are and grow into ourselves without the crutch of a parasocial friend.
I still like Sabrina Carpenter. I think her songs are catchy, and I can respect the empire she’s built for herself. I wouldn’t call myself an avid fan but the sense of betrayal is gone. Seeing her old “Girl Meets World” episodes is now more jarring than seeing her as she exists now. Maybe I’ve found myself a new role model, or maybe I’m just all grown up.
Arianna Kaplan SC ’27 is very concerned with college social dynamics, our weird nightlife scene, creative nonfiction and philosophy. She will tell you, without fail, that she studied abroad in Paris. Please, please, please ask her about it.
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