Hilary Duff vs. Amanda Bynes
Battle of the Cable Refugee Tween Queens

Prologue

[snippet from actual recent conversation]
1: You know, Hilary Duff -- she's the one who's the star of her own cable show and now she's in that movie and she's some sort of 'tween icon.

2: You mean Amanda Bynes.

1: No, the one who's the star of her own cable show and who's in a movie now.

2: Yes, that's Amanda Bynes.

1: But doesn't Hilary Duff also have a cable show?

2: Yes.

We don't mean to sound old, but who exactly are Amanda Bynes and Hilary Duff?

(Of course, simply by asking this question, we have invited a world of trouble upon our heads. Because you want to know who knows who Amanda Bynes and Hilary Duff are? Ten-year-olds -- ten-year-olds know. And ten-year-olds have computers, and they bite.)

Hilary Duff, for the record, is the one who's fifteen years old. She's currently starring in The Lizzie McGuire Movie, in which she travels to a glamorous city overseas and becomes a national media sensation there. Before that, she starred in Agent Cody Banks, as the love interest for Frankie Muniz. She is also the star of Lizzie McGuire, the TV show, which is a big hit on the Disney Channel. She is also the one who you saw in the most recent Vanity Fair Hollywood issue in among the film icons, listed as "The Tween Queen," and, if you're like us, you thought, "Who? What? Huh?" in roughly that order.

Amanda Bynes, for the record, is the one who's seventeen years old. She recently starred in What A Girl Wants, in which she travels to a glamorous city overseas and becomes a national media sensation there. Before that, she starred in Big Fat Liar, as the love interest for Frankie Muniz. She was also the star of The Amanda Show, the TV show, which was a bit hit on Nickelodeon. She also stars on the WB's What I Like About You, along with Jennie Garth, a.k.a. The Walking Glimpse Into Amanda Bynes's Own Grisly Future.

Which raises the question in our archaic brains: Since when do teenagers become big stars by being on cable shows and then get to star in movies of their own?

When we were kids, no one paid attention to cable shows because there was no cable. When we were kids, there were only three TV channels that mattered -- ABC, NBC, and CBS -- and only about eight TV stars in total. And TV only came on for two hours a day, from 10 AM to noon, and then it went off again and we all went back to tilling the fields.

And in our day, all the children on TV shows were played by adults, and the only "child"-star was Plug Whompers, the rascally urchin from the hit show The Ruinous Plow. And he was played by a forty-three-year-old actor named Scollard "Five Fingers" McCaffrey, who caused a national scandal when he married a horse, and who later drank himself to death.

But that apparently isn't good enough for today's kids. No sir. Nowadays they have to have 500 channels and 5000 "stars." And obscure Disney-channel TV shows that most people have never heard of are being turned into movies -- that is, when the "powers that be" aren't too busy turning titles from bad follow-up hits by pop divas into movies.

And then the next thing you know you've got two young "tween" stars who are exactly the same, but if you point any of this out, the ten-year-olds come for you, and they are merciless.

Advantage: Duff, the "Tween Queen." Who are we to argue with Vanity Fair?