Did you hear? Kim Possible went to the junior prom with long-time best friend and fellow crime-fighting sidekick Ron Stoppable, and while they were dancing they…gasp…kissed!
My eight-year-old daughter’s reaction as we watched this scene from the Kim Possible: So the Drama movie was to squirm, hide her eyes behind her hands, and say “Gross!” to cover up the fact she thought it was pretty cool.
My reaction was to sigh. How sweet.
…and then to think, in this specific order,
1. It’s about time! Ron and Kim have been best friends since preschool. When were those show-creators going to give viewers some payoff for all those years of innocent romantic tension that had been building up? I suspected all along those two crazy kids would make a cute couple.
Which led to…
2. How cool that popular teen, head cheerleader Kim fell for klutzy boy-next door Ron. Perfect use of the friends-into-lovers plot scenario. And what validation, showing that a guy doesn’t have to be the alpha-male hyper-masculine studly sort to get the girl. Geeks everywhere score a major victory.
Which was followed by…
3. I can’t believe I’m analyzing a cartoon this way!
Which landed me at…
4. Wow, even cartoons have romance in them these days. When I was growing up, Wonder Woman fought side by side with Batman with nary a coy look sent across the Justice League conference table. And my young self had no clue Daphne and Freddie might be more than just crime-fighting Scooby Gang buddies. Back in my day, two dimensional people didn’t have that third, love dimension. They were dateless, a-sexual line drawings who engaged in whacky hijinks and saved the world from certain annihilation every ten minutes.
Which sent me hypothesizing that…
5. Kids these days must be way more sophisticated and savvy than I was at their age. Or could it be that girls – and let’s face it, Kim Possible is all about Girl Power – are born with that romance gene, and television program creators have just become more shrewd about exploiting it sooner and more openly? Forget that near-kiss-by-spaghetti noodle between Lady and Tramp. Just go for the money…er, romance…shot straight out.
Which naturally implied…
6. Maybe the current popularity of romantica and erotica (or whatever word you choose to call the steamier stuff on the shelves these days) has to do with the fact that by the time readers are older, they’ve already had their fill of sweet romance via Kim Possible and Lizzie Maguire and all those tweenie movies that sport rows of thirteen year olds giggling into their popcorn. Maybe it’s a matter of building up a tolerance and needing stronger stuff to achieve the same affect. The shock value isn’t there. Perhaps this is more evidence for the theory of de-sensitization achieved through too much exposure. For boys, it’s de-sensitization against violence achieved by playing too many video games. For girls it’s all about the cartoon kissing.
But, I rationalized…
7. I think it’s charming that my daughter thinks Ron and Kim kissing is cool. I’m glad she gets that little thrill when the characters fall in love, proving she has the heart of a true romantic. And since she still squirms all over the place when such a scene comes on, I’m not too worried she’s ahead of her years romantically. She still thinks boys have cooties, which is fine for now.
After all this, I had to go back to Thought #3.
Holy cow. I can’t believe I’m analyzing the love scene in a cartoon movie.
Even worse, I can’t believe I sighed when Kim and Ron kissed.
I’m so hopeless.
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My kids watch that show, too, and I really enjoyed the thought process behind this post. It’s one of my favorites I’ve read so far. Thank you!
I love that Kim Possible!! My son is 4, the whole romance thing is lost on him. He only sees they get the bad guy.
One of his favorite movies is The Incredibles. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched that movie and was left thinking, what a great romance!
Excellent post! I would have gone through a very similar thought process, only I would have tried to talk it out with my husband, and added a dash of hysteria on item #6 about whether we were letting our kid watch too much tv, and he would have stared at me as if I were crazy. Isn’t it wonderful how we have a whole online community of crazy people we can share such things with? Thanks for showing us some crazy-that-isn’t-crazy.
I remember as a teen/preteen watching Scooby Doo and thinking about the romance between Fred and Daphne. I don’t think the shows kids watch have altered too much there are just more of them and like our shows they reflect society now. At least a sanitised version of how kids see it. They are also more age specific. Lizzie, Raven. w.i.t.c.h and KP are teen/preteen shows. The suite life, Lilo and Stitch and some other shows are younger or more general, at least that’s how it seems to me.
On the other hand — Underdog did have a love interest in Sweet Polly Purebred. Mighty Mouse had TWO girlfriends — Pearl Pureheart and Mitzi!
I’ve been reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to my third graders. When Harry was asking Cho to the dance, the girls were paying rapt attention. Now, when I was reading about the dragon battle, that, the boys liked.
There was romance on TV in the sixties too. I was about 8 when Jeannie and Major Nelson got married — and that was a very big event too.
My dd (four years old) adores Kim Possible. Yesterday as we were getting ready to go on a museum adventure, she brought her brush in my room and said, “Mommy, I want my hair to look like Kim Possible!”
I thought, “Well, at least she’s emulating someone who’s got GirlPower in spades!” I do appreciate the fact that Kim Possible is portrayed as a strong female …
Hadn’t seen the kiss, though … I, too, have thought that Kim and Ron would wind up as a couple … But she’d keep her maiden name of course, because Kim Stoppable just wouldn’t be the same!
Nicely done — I analyzed it the same way, too, and even gave a little cheer. Kim and Ron, supercouple in the making.
I do invest in the romance of TV couples rather frequently. Which reminds me, I really should check in on Degrassi: The Next Generation to see if there’s any new development in the Joey/Caitlin thing.:wink:
Romance in cartoons is nothing new. lady and the tramp, anyone? And all those old loony toons about the poor cat who was mistaken for a skunk by Pepe Le Peu. And what about Muppet Babies, where Miss Piggy was every bit as into “Kermie” as a piglet? Or Smurfette?
What is interesting though, is the cultural imperative that a story for a woman HAS to have a romance in it. I remember a few years ago playing a video game called SYBERIA.
(spoiler warning for people who want to play Syberia)
It was a great game, about a young female lawyer who was travelling through small towns in Eastern Europe, trying to track down the eccentric owner of a toy company who neeed to sign some papers for her client. The owner had gone off on some madcap search for surviving mammoths. Anyway, it was a great game, and the lawyer is engaged to this guy back in NY, who periodically calls throughout the game and gets increasingly annoying and bullying to her that she won’t come home. Near the end of the game, she dumps his ass and decides to go off and look for mammoths with the toy company owner. I remember thinking this was a hugely satisfying ending and telling all my friends about it, and they all got this dreamy look in their eyes and talked about how romantic it was — and I was like — no, there’s no romance. She is on her own, having adventures. She didn’t go off with the guy because she loved him. They were surprised, because it seemed to them the obvious ending would be that she found another guy. I was happy that she was making herself happy.
Guess that’s why I write chick lit and not romance.
I don’t have kids. I don’t even have nieces or nephews. And I love to watch Kim Possible.
I think it’s so sweet that Kim and Ron got together. My daughters and I watch Kim Possible when we can catch it (as programming isn’t always reliable here in Australia). It’s nice to know the geeks can be noticed as romantics, especially by “alpha females”.
The best romances come when the lovers were friends first.
And there’s nothing wrong with analysing cartoons. I do it all the time.
I’d been rooting for Wade. Too bad he’s only ten.
I guess we’re all hopeless. Don’t feel bad. I loved that Ron and Kim got together at the prom! My DD is 11 and we’ve watched So the Drama a couple of times. I sighed too. This is why I write romance, because cartoon characters sharing a smooch makes me wispy.
My dad teases me that I still watch Saturday morning cartoons as I’m almost 30. Hey! Cartoons haven’t been this good since I was a kid. I love Kim Possible, and another really cool show is Danny Phantom on Nickelodeon. I love the romantic tension between him and his goth friend who is a girl, Sam. With the exception of one ep, Danny is so clueless that Sam really likes him, and it’s being handled so well, imo. I can’t wait to see where they take it