Topless photos, quickie marriages and various relapses, oh my! In an effort to answer the oft-asked question, “What’s going on with kids today?” Guanabee Associate Editor Alex Alvarez takes a look at the crop of young, rehabulous female stars carefully crafted by Disney.

“What’s going on with kids today?” I’m often asked, being the foremost expert on slutty toddlers. My answer is always the same: I have no idea, really.

I assume children are all off wiping their noses on a door handle I’m about to touch or peeing in public pools. “But these Disney kids! What is the world coming to?” Shut eyes, shake head, cluck tongue. In response, I shrug. Because while I always assume children are off somewhere being horrible, I never assume they’re busy posing nearly nude on magazine covers or tweaking on meth or shaving their heads while several dozen cameras flash in their faces. Take the aforementioned crop of (all female) Disney-groomed mini moguls that have held TV and radio waves, newsstands and gossip blogs, hostage for the past few years. Yes, Disney, that supposed bastion of wholesome family entertainment and old-fashioned values, keeps seeming to produce young, female stars that are more Sinderella than Cinderella. Ella. Ella. Haha. Cough. Anyway. These children, and the Cheetos-stained adults they might turn into, are not normal. The things they do are not “things that children do” and they’re failings and scandals are not in any way symptomatic of a generation at large. It’s a travesty to some, but should be described as a trend by no one.

So let’s take a look at six Disney child stars, how they fucked up their public image and how these young women can, possibly, turn it around to cultivate some semblance of a normal life:

Lalaine Vergara-Paras

Age: 21

Claim to Fame: Starred as Latina friend and neighbor “Miranda” on “Lizzie MacGuire” TV series. She wore funky hair and was edgy, we guess, for someone who hadn’t yet taken meth.

Fall from Grace: She took meth.

Ay, Lalaine. Until very recently, I didn’t even realize she had a last name, much less two. One’s teen years and early twenties are, typically, a time to test boundaries and experiment as a means of developing an identity. A shaky time for anyone, but things get even shakier when that identity is a product marketed to eleven year-olds. Unfortunately in Lalaine’s case, that product just wasn’t as marketable as co-star (and exception to every rule set forth in this feature) Hilary Duff. So, is Lalaine’s drug use a symptom of a young girl growing up and testing limits, or a child star dissatisfied with her current situation and relative lack of career momentum? Answer: Who cares? Lalaine’s status as both a human being and a product are so intrinsically linked at this point that it’s fruitless to try and separate the two.

How She Can Turn It Around: Lalaine should probably just continue her meth use until she’s far gone enough to warrant a spot on “Celebrity Rehab,” a role she can later parlay into her own reality TV series or sex tape “Life In The Fast Lalaine.”

Lindsay Lohan

Age: Almost 22, on July 2 (I only know this because two of my friends happen to share her birthday. And because I have “Lindsay Morgan Lohan: July 22, 1986” tattooed on my left bicep.

Claim to Fame: While she starred in various commercials and a soap opera prior to her movie roles, Lindsay rose to fame playing twin sisters in Disney’s unnecessary but entertaining remake of The Parent Trap. Mean Girls cemented her soon-to-fade status as a cinematic Teen Queen. She also released a couple albums no one bought.

Fall from Grace: Drugs, Alcohol, Promiscuity

Lindsay has a lot to deal with lately. Her parents are… How to put it? Completely batshit insane, self-absorbed attention-starved megalomaniacs with little to no regard for the well-being of their children. How do I know this? They’ve told me, directly, in the form of countless unwanted interviews, sound bites and a reality TV series. We’d find it difficult to hit the bottle and wear a stranger’s cocaine-filled pants, too, if we had parents like Michael and Dina. Lindsay has basically become a caricature of a “Hollywood Bad Girl” at this point, complete with platinum blonde extensions in place of her famed red hair. She’s got the same propensity to experiment and test limits as any other young girl, except with a lot more money to do so and paparazzi bulbs flashing the entire time.

How She Can Turn It Around: Lindsay should quit the whole “singing” thing and focus on making movies that showcase her two, greatest gifts: Spot-on comedic timing and awesome hair. A Christopher Guest movie, perhaps?

Britney Spears

Age: 26

Claim to Fame: “Hit Me Baby One More Time” ensnared a public with a seemingly insatiable thirst for mediocre pop songs sung by overly made-up Lolita. From then on, Britney’s robotic vocals and catchy pop beats — not to mention her infamous “snake dance” — had people talking about how she’s not a girl, not yet a woman and not quite all there.

Fall from Grace: Alleged drug use, Ill-Advised Marriage, Nervous Breakdown

Since her days dancing and sort of maybe singing on “The Mickey Mouse Club,” Britney has grown up in the media spotlight. Can you imagine what it’s like having strangers speculate whether the suspiciously large growths on your chest are implants or puberty? Can you imagine what it’s like thriving on attention and idle speculation so much that you start to grow a little insane when the attention isn’t squarely focused on you at all times, so you go out and marry some random asshole, then marry some other random asshole, then film a reality TV series, then shave your head and attack a car with an umbrella, then lock yourself and your child in a bathroom, prompting a little visit to a hospital? Probably not, right? But people become addicted to all kinds of things - attention being one of them.

How She Can Turn It Around: Britney should just stop. She should swim in her pool, drink fraps, collect royalties and just stop.

Vanessa Hudgens

Age: 19

Claim to Fame: Hudgens plays “Gabriela,” a Latina with a thing for skinny white boys who look like skinny white girls, in all seventeen hundred High School Musical movies. She also came out with an album and is good at posing.

Fall from Grace: Nude Photos

I touched upon (er…) my fascination with Vanessa’s nude pictures in a post. Basically, I wondered about the lack of outrage over her chocha photos while thousands of people pitched a collective shit fit over Miley Cyrus’ Vanity Fair shoot. My guess? Because Vanessa isn’t “White,” there’s the subconscious but firmly cemented impression that she must be, inherently, more sexually precocious than an Anglo girl. Vanessa is expected to be hot and sexualized because, as a “person of color,” she’s less person, more color, and all of it centered below the neck.

How She Can Turn It Around: Vanessa, from what I can tell, seems to actually be a pleasant-looking girl with vocal and dancing talent. It’ll sound really nice when she asks if I want ketchup with that. Just kidding! She should go to college and then maybe act in some movies and eventually start a clothing line, production company, a restaurant and a line of really cute autographed prosthetic limbs or whatever.

Miley Cyrus

Age: 15

Claim to Fame: Arguably the reigning queen of tweendom, Miley is the center of the “Hannah Montana” franchise, which includes a TV series, dolls, games and even a 3D movie that’s wholesome fun for the entire family, should your family consist solely of pre-teen girls and middle-aged, creepy uncles.

Fall from Grace: Racy Photos, Controversial Magazine Spread

The youngest of the bunch, Miley Cyrus is not, to the best of my knowledge, some sort of “girl gone wild.” Nor is she the hapless and voiceless pawn of some huge media conglomerate. Or, put another way, she’s kind of a bit of both without being entirely either one. As a brand that brings in millions of dollars for Disney, she’s powerful, but she’s also so, so young. Lots of young girls send or post or take pictures of themselves in sexy poses. It doesn’t make it right or wrong or appropriate or not. It just makes it, well, not something shocking or abnormal. As for her Vanity Fair shoot, well, that seemed like a pretty calculated attempt at getting her particular market share to grow and have her appeal to older teens as a sex object rather than remain a wholesome character for young children. Miley’s only crime, in that case, is being famous.

How She Can Turn It Around: Miley is a talented young girl suffering from massive overexposure. Take a break, Miley! Focus on school and learning how to French, then return when you’re a little older and wiser to make a million bazillion more dollars corrupting impressionable young girls for the Man. Mouse. Anthropomorphic Man-Mouse?

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So who’s to blame? The parents? Disney executives? Paparazzi? The public? Yes. We’re all culpable in creating and driving the machine that churns out pop stars for us to consume and spit out at whim. The real problematic aspects of these downward spiraling Disney stars, as I see it, is that this fascination is toxic to young women - both those who’re famous and those who think being famous warrants some sort of worhship. This might surprise you, but I’m completely unaware of what Justin Timberlake’s scrotum looks like and I’ve never overheard a heated argument at the water cooler over a shirtless magazine spread with Zac Efron. Because we don’t own these young men they way we own young women like Miley and Britney. They’re ours to study and critique. Their ours at which to gaze and emulate or despise, to feel attracted to or repulsed by. Because they’re all surface. Sure, they can sing or dance or act (or not), but what’s singing and dancing worth if I don’t know what brand of lip gloss you’re using or whether you’re pregnant with your co-stars babies? Female celebrities’ bodies, from the color of their hair to the contents of their wombs, belong to us and we’re given a free pass to consume them as we desire. So, let’s enjoy a cool dance routine or sing along to Lindsay as a guilty pleasure, but let’s also think about what it is that we’re consuming and, thus, condoning. Because Miley? Is only posing topless because she thought you wanted her to.

Mickey Image: “Corporate Contraband” [Adam Strange]