The Good the Bad and the Fugly – Hanna Montana’s American Dream by Sophie Flynn

After months of immersing myself in anything a child of the noughties may be into, as a source for my experiment. Hannah Montana, Pussy cat Dolls, Hell, I’ve even been watching the Wizards of Waverley place.

I noticed a change in me … (not a magical one) it was like all restrictions were gone, I was young confident and free. I was going on X factor with my friend and we were going to win it. I was going to be signed up by Simon Cowell and taken to America. Where I’d have like a trillion fans and I’d guest star on glee. I’d be famous and live in LA in a huge mansion. I’d be best friends with Rhianna and we’d go to awesome parties and have loads of friends. And I’d be dating Olly Murs, until I cheated on him with a member of One Direction.

Yes, my inner noughties child was screaming to get out. She was confident, stylish and she looked a little bit like Nicole Scherzinger, mostly she wanted designer brands, hair extensions and pink stilettos.

You see she was ready to turn on ‘The Hills’... Willingly. She may even have come in from work to switch on ‘The only Way is Essex’ … Willingly. But in reality she was only eight years old and none of these things were important, or they shouldn’t have been.

Today I was asked by someone I’d never met before, whether I was American. Apparently, I had a slight twang to my voice.

In reality I’m someone more likely to have a union flag tattooed on my bottom than a star spangled banner tattooed on my hiney. I was slightly gobsmacked by the comment and immediately adjusted my tone into being a little bit more, bollocks, arse, tits, bloody hell, cup of tea. British.

But, you can’t ignore the facts, life experience changes you, so had I been brain washed to be more like an American? Had I picked up on any other characteristics? I was certainly more patriotic, I had to resist shouting “USA, USA, USA” whilst watching England play football on Sunday night. But in all seriousness, I had definitely picked up on some of the mannerisms of Hanna Montana’s crew, attitude, posture even hand gestures. I have to say there is nothing more annoying than a child wiggling their hand in your face and saying “no you didn’t.”

In reality we are getting more Anglo-American culturally and that’s not just our children. And along with that comes a huge variety of good and bad. Good = patriotic, successful at sport, business and innovation, Bad = obese, body conscious, problems with gun crime, drugs, violence and internet crime. All I can say for definite after this experiment is that the children of this country are going to be a lot more diverse in ten years time. Make your own mind up on whether you think it’s good, bad or godamm Fugly.