Are those Happy Bunny t-shirts from middle school the reason we’re all like this?

Here's a fun fact for you, babe readers: all through my early teenage years, my mom had some very strict rules for my school wardrobe. The edicts included only one (1) black shirt per week, prohibition of safety pins as accessories, and nothing with Kurt Cobain on it. I wanted to be an alterna-punkbitch, but my mom knew I was really just a sweet nerd who raced home to play Neopets and feed my beta fish every day. We found common ground with Happy Bunny, though.

I know you remember that skinty bitch Happy Bunny! She was all over Hot Topic, Claire's, Icing by Claire's, Journey's, and anywhere Vans were also sold. Happy Bunny covered notebooks and shirts and stickers, and she was usually saying something rude as hell.

Cute but psycho, things even out

You'd be cooler if you were me

It's cute how you think I'm listening to you

You suck and that's sad

Obviously, Mama Ross kept me away from the cruder sayings (sucks was a bad word in our house, ugh) but anything about being *~*sAsSy*~* was fair game. Actually, if you think about it, everything from like 2003-2009 was about being a sassy gal. I mean, our queens on high were Kristin Cavallari and Paris Hilton, arguably the most self-centered people on the planet. But looking back, maybe this obsession with sass has…ruined us and all human interaction forever?

Ok, think about it: we're all obsessed with clapping back. Everyone thinks they have haters, even 19-year-old girls who still hang out in Sonic parking lots. It's cool to be flippant and emotionally unavailable, but then we freak the fuuuuck out if a guy does it back to us. Am I saying Happy Bunny and her ilk are the reason I'm going to die alone and never achieve true inner happiness after decades of fruitless searching? No! But if you have the artist's address, let me know…not because I'm planning to throw a brick through his window or anything, relax.

Maybe they didn't ruin us. Maybe this just gave rise to the baddest generation to ever live — badder than the kids on the playground with silver teeth, even! Like, look at this ensemble, featuring one of Happy Bunny's proteges:

I know for a fact we wouldn't even have Megan-Fox-avi-cherry-emoji Twitter without this stuff. I mean, we might not even have Fashion Nova — because what are crotchless pleather pants that make your ass look like a ready-to-be-peeled Babybel Cheese but the gauchos of yesteryear? At the end of the day, it's a tradeoff: our indoctrination into sassydom made us emotionally stunted babies, sure, but it also gave us the preternatural ability to stunt on our enemies. Fair enough.

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