Nothing’s Wrong with Me

As a young child, I was positively obsessed with the Disney Channel Original Movie “Pixel Perfect.“ It always stayed in my mind as I grew up, yet I could never actually remember much of the characters or plot aside from the hologram of the hour herself, Loretta. I couldn’t care less about her jerky creator or the trite love triangle or rampant plot holes. That wasn’t why I watched it over and over again as a little girl who didn’t know she was neurodivergent or queer but did know she felt like an alien.

Loretta is a hologram. She’s not human and she never will be, even as with a splash of Disney magic she begins to start experiencing real emotion. She lives more in cyberspace than reality, she has zero social skills; all she knows is singing and dancing just as she was programmed to… and wanting more, wanting to join humanity, just as she wasn’t. Yet, the human world not only accepts her in her strangeness, they embrace it. It’s what makes her special.

She danced across the floor, spouted odd commentary, wore far out ensembles. So did I. I was met with teasing and strange looks. Loretta, on the other hand, owned her strangeness and was revered for it.

In what became not just the movie’s but my own anthem, Loretta sings at first, “You may find me just a little strange,” in the end proclaiming it proudly- “Nothing’s wrong with me!” I wanted nothing more than to be able to sing “Nothing’s wrong with me!” and believe it whenever a teacher decided I was lonely and friendless simply for choosing to draw by myself or a classmate stared at me uncomprehendingly at just the mention of a special interest. I wanted to wear the most vibrant, out there clothes in my wardrobe and show the world what I could do instead of hiding in drab threads that just weren’t me. I wanted to transform like the human behind the hologram who actually wrote those lyrics. You see, the happy ending was for her all along. Under the influence of a few hundred megapixels, the insecure teen tries and fails to be something she’s not, instead gaining the courage to confidently take her band back as her honest, “strange” self.

In hindsight, the movie is just as cheesy and problematic as you’d expect. Yet, that doesn’t change the fact that in those 90 minutes, young Alice felt that someday she too could sing it proudly:

“Nothing’s wrong with me!”