Café Hipster: Disney Does Brooklyn
- Disney City Girl
The classic story of a small-town girl with dreams of moving to the big city is one that we’re all familiar with. But can any story really be called a “classic” if it hasn’t been covered by Disney? Doesn’t a classic story need the Disney seal of approval before it can shed its banal trappings and truly enter the realm of legend? I mean, sure. Well, lucky for everyone who has lived out her own version of making it in this crazy town of ours, Disney has finally decided to adapt this story into a simulated game called “Disney City Girl” wherein we can all relive or, if we’re actually from New York, live for the very first time, the life of a young dreamer who is trying to make her dreams come true in the big city. Let’s play, shall we?
The game is all about a young woman who loves her small town but is ready to leave and try her luck in the big city. Will she get out of her “grungy studio” and make it to a “Park Avenue penthouse”? Will her “BFF Jenna” and “adventurous Auntie Katie” help her along the way? Will she ever make it big and go from being an “overworked intern” to a “successful CEO”? I don’t know! It’s up to you! You have to navigate the ins and outs of NYC by doing things like choosing the right outfit for an outing to “Café Hipster” (which just has to be in Brooklyn) and decorating your apartment with a “rustic bench” that wouldn’t look out of place in any Greenpoint apartment. You can pursue careers like “chef” or “fashion designer” and make friends, just like you would in your real life in the city. Exciting! I would have tried playing but I have basically no tolerance for and/or interest in games like this, so I didn’t play. But, according to DNAInfo, “the bulk of its players are 20 to 29-year-old women” so I guess plenty of other adult women are into this sort of thing?
It’s always interesting to see aspects of one’s life dramatized—thus the popularity of shows like Girls—so that everything that feels fake can be critiqued and everything that feels real can be appreciated. So it is kind of fun to check out Disney’s City Girls and nod knowingly when you find out that “BFF Jenna” is “a child of privilege” because of course she is. How else would she afford to lead her carefree life? She doesn’t have to work even though we have to toil away in some dead-end internship, hoping to parlay it into something bigger and better. Barf. Isn’t that always how it is? The one upsetting element for me personally though is that I realized that I am probably not well-dressed enough to fit into Café Hipster. After all, I never wear high heels with my skintight jeans. I might as well just write off my dreams of living in a Park Avenue penthouse right now. Fuck. I’m never gonna make it in this town.
Follow Kristin Iversen on twitter @kmiversen