Punky Brewster and Other Musings

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The other day I finally found time to watch Kid 90, a documentary on Hulu from Soleil Moon Frye aka Punky Brewster, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
Documentaries have always intrigued me. How do they live? What do they think? How does it compare to my life? What’s their story? I’ve always possessed this natural curiosity about pretty much any person I encounter. I think when we watch any type of reality tv that there is an element of curiosity in how we live compared to everyone else? Am I the same or different than other people?

Seeing the inner workings of someone’s life is fascinating to me. I can remember when the Humans of New York books came out, I was captivated. I had to have one for my coffee table. I envisioned it being the topic of many discussions for whoever visited my house… let’s just say some were more interested than others. There’s one common element no matter what type of lifestyle we have and whether famous or not…we all feel the same emotions.

Me being a Punky Brewster fan since the age of 4, I knew this documentary is something I would love to absorb.
I was instantly pulled in. Over the course of Soleil’s life, she documented everything. She even says “it’s like she knew growing up that she was going to have a story to tell.”

And might I say she told it so well. It was fascinating seeing all the 90s teens stars in photos with her. Literally, it’s like ALL of them hung out together in some big underground secret life. They were close. Anyone who was anyone on film or tv during that era were friends.

Soleil poured her heart into her diary and read openly about her feelings as life swirled around her. Who she crushed on, how she felt, nothing was off-limits. But the thing that stuck out to me the most was her confidence.

She owned her emotions and actions and displayed them for the world to see. She went through puberty publicly. She even documented her breast reduction as a teen. She was never ashamed of anything she went through.
The life she lived, she embraced with no apologies. She loved life, all of it, even when it hurt. Through friends taking their lives and her own heartbreaks she somehow overcame it and let it better her.

It was so inspiring!

Me being a person who greatly lacks self-confidence there is a yearning in me that wishes I just would have been able to embrace the messy parts of life more instead of feeling ashamed. I want to accept myself more and own all of the things. Instead, I seem stuck in a vicious cycle of knowing the biggest way to boost self-confidence is by putting myself out there and accomplishing things that matter to me. Yet, I often let my sensitivity to criticism get in the way of truly living my passion.

There is beauty and purpose in all aspects of life. Growing up in the 90s was an amazing time to be a teenager. Child star or not, we all shared the same angsty, dramatic, exhilarating, devastating, and necessary parts of growing up.
If you were a teenager that grew up in the 90s I highly recommend this documentary.

P.S. A couple of weeks after watching this I then moved on to the Pink Documentary: All I Know So far….absolutely fascinating. So amazing that I watched it three times, but that’s a story for another time…