Heart Full of Horses
Written by Adelina Rose Gowans
Growing up, ponies were everywhere around me. It happened like this: my parents raised me on sixty acres of naturalized farmland—infinite elbow room for imaginative play—and a whole heap of little horses, like the lullaby. Retired racehorses, horses bought out of other people’s backyards, easily-spooked horse show hopefuls. The inside of my childhood home has between ten to fifteen pieces of horse-themed artwork—twelve usually, more around Christmas. My mom took lessons, showed when she could, and still trail rides regularly.
But I never had much interest in being on a horse. In fact, as a little girl, I begged to quit horseback riding lessons. The physical feeling of letting a massive, supernaturally-gorgeous animal hold my baby life in its hands—or well, hooves—really terrified me. My conceptualization of horses was always—just that, more conceptual than my mom’s. I wanted my horses precious and pink and big-eyed, small enough to balance in the palm of my hand.
My personal journey with My Little Pony began during the tail end of Generation 3 in the mid-to-late 2000’s. As a little girl, I cherished my toy ponies—hosted their tea parties, taught cooking classes for them. I organized girlipop horse weddings on the staircase, gathering the unicorns and earth ponies together for the special occasion. I brushed their hair resolutely for the big day, and sticker-bombed the staircase for wedding decor. I read pony picture books voraciously; memorably, there was a copy of Butterfly Hunt in the backseat of our family truck for the majority of my childhood (where did it go?). I cherished the DVD specials—A Very Minty Christmas and A Very Pony Place in particular. Everything was simultaneously VERY! and low stimulation sweet. The ponies were good-hearted and girly. I saw myself in them.
When I was seven years old, Generation 4 glittered onto the scene with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic—heralding a whole new era of pony fandom. It was a brighter and louder, but kept the same spirit of friendship of the film and TV franchises of eras before. It served as a perfect way for me to continue my love of My Little Pony—though not everything changed for the better. Even as a child myself, I could sense the 2010s internet shifting into an untenable world for children. It had always been an unwieldy thing to navigate, but I felt it escalating in alarming ways. My afternoons spent on GirlsGoGames and Pixie Hollow Online quickly morphed into the reality that I couldn’t Google Pinkie Pie or Twilight Sparkle without seeing sexy body pillows or renditions of them as anime girls in bikinis.
It wasn’t engaging with adult media that disturbed me. I started playing World of Warcraft with my dad and uncles at the age of six, and never had so little as a single bad dream. My maternal and paternal grandmothers both watched crime shows liberally around me as a kid (much to my parents horror when they eventually found out), which led to plenty of bad dreams—but I didn’t resent CSI: Miami or Law and Order: SVU for existing. Laying in my bed at my paternal grandmother’s patio home, the sound of all-too-familiar womankilling howling from the living room down the hallway into my little bedroom, I close my eyes. I open them and check between the curtain blinds. I close my eyes again and think of my Littlest Pet Shop hospital (later, I will learn this specific toy was called the Biggest Littlest Pet Shop, or BLPS for short) and my Calico Critters who live in a camper van and my Breezie ponies with their diva eyeshadow and tiny gauzy wings. I guess—at the time—I saw myself as standing on a threshold, where I could peer across the expanse of time into adult media, but the idea of adults doing the same for my media—and bringing their contextualization to it—troubled me greatly. Unsure of what else to do, I self-regulated—stopped Googling ponies, consumed no content other than the show itself. I was nine or ten years old, completely confused by the fact that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was consumed by an older male fanbase.
Real horses, like G4, are equal parts beautiful and dangerous. Some of my earliest memories are of my mother, Coco, being thrown off her house. I’m writing World of Warcraft fanfiction in my Five Star Notebook, sitting in the grass when I see Coco hit the ground. I toss my notebook and pens aside and rush toward her, calling out. She lays flat on her back, tells me she’s okay—she’s just going to lay here for a second, and then she’ll be okay. Years later, she’ll get thrown off the same horse and break her back. But she still rides: another horse, another era of life, all for the love of it—this connection, this fairytale animal bond. It’s magic.
I watched the entire Friendship is Magic series, but never touched Equestria Girls: the G4 spin-off franchise where the ponies became girls and went to high school. It felt oddly sacrilegious to me, the idea of girlhorses becoming human girls. I’m sure it had doll appeal for plenty of kids my age, but I felt this palpable sense that they were turning into girls for an audience that wasn’t me. As an adult, I learned this was at least somewhat true—with the franchise being unpopular with Friendship is Magic creator Lauren Faust for its stereotypical media approach, as well as with moms and progressive bloggers due to concerns about who the media was really for. When I was a G3 baby, there was an aimless yet interconnected girllove in every piece of My Little pony content I consumed—a simultaneous lack of connection to earthly reality and down-to-earthness that brought a timeless aura. Equestria Girls felt like an inside joke I didn’t know the punchline to.
I go back and forth on how I feel about Brony culture. I loved Friendship is Magic, and I can see how anyone, regardless of age or gender, could connect with the franchise—even if their pathway to engagement might have been different than mine. Still, it’s impossible not to admit that many, many Bronies were creeps—and I resented and—frankly—feared their presence in the fandom as a kid. I wish there had been a safer way for the different demographics of the Friendship is Magic fanbase to coexist in intentionally separate internet spaces safely in the 2010s—for there to have been safe places for little girls to go. Is there ever?
A few years ago, my girlfriend showed me RetroGeek Crafts, a pony restoration artist creating content I wish I’d had as a little girl. Watching her restore vintage ponies—often dirty, sometimes severely damaged—into beautiful, timeless toys made me smile in a way that was as much for my past self as for my present. The part of her content that surprised me most was the gentle warning she gives before ever removing a pony’s head to clean or repair or rehair it, an acknowledgement of and respectfulness towards the variety of ages who might watch her videos. I thought about how much I would’ve appreciated a pony decapitation warning as a kid—the little girl who would close her eyes when the pony’s head popped off.
By the time Generation 5 came along, I was in college. I kept tabs loosely on the franchise, and was honestly sort of appalled. The Brony fandom, however intense, was largely ephemeral long-term—and it was clear that G5 was the anti-Brony media, for the worse. It wasn’t just that the franchise was clearly targeting kids and kids only—although I thought the plot suffered for it. I understood why Hasbro was taking a‘ safe’ approach after the fandom highs and lows of G4. Mostly, I was jarred by the vapid pop culture vacuum of G5—the CoComelon strangeness of a world that attempted to recontextualize and build upon the magic of the franchises that came before, yet at the same time centered cop ponies and influencer ponies with iPhones magically balanced on their hooves. The world felt infinitely more worldly, for the worse.
I believe My Little Pony, and many other children’s franchises, are at their strongest when they can be enjoyed by multiple age demographics while still being safe for kids to engage with. I see this in the afterlife of G1 and G3: eras with small but vibrant convention scenes, vintage collecting, and restoration work. It’s the same love I see in my mom’s love of horses—a joy that can shift and mature over time, but keeps its vibrant heart.
“It’s the same love I see in my mom’s love of horses—a joy that can shift and mature over time, but keeps its vibrant heart.”
When G5 was officially, swiftly discontinued only three years after its launch, I remember stumbling across someone on YouTube quoting C.S. Lewis in the comment section of one of the many why G5 failed videos.“ A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is a bad children’s story.” –C. S. Lewis… G4 understood this. G5 did not. 2.4k likes. In the replies, countless fans (including the video creator) started talking about how much they loved The Chronicles of Narnia. I thought, maybe this is the eternality of being horse-hearted. No show being created or cancelled, no reimagined IP, no axing of franchises can ever take away the love of ponies. The love of ponies belongs to all of us: the horse girls and the G3 divas and the G4 nostalgia kids and the babies growing up loving G5 against the odds and the Bronies who stuck around and weren’t creeps and the video essayists and the fan artists and the vintage toy collectors—here we are, sharing the collective horsedream.
Last year, I started collecting vintage My Little Ponies from the 1980s: G1. I don’t know exactly what inspired it—maybe RetroGeek Crafts and her beautiful restorations, maybe growing up, maybe being in love. First, I buy two ponies from a woman on Etsy because they remind me of my girlfriend and I—the unicorn Starflower for her, Cherries Jubilee for me. During an Olive Garden gift exchange, my friend gives me the pegasus Skydancer for Christmas that they found at a thrift market. The woman at the checkout counter told my friend that the previous owner loved ponies and took very good care of her; she was delighted that the pegasus would be going to a collector who would give her a sweet girl home. I pretend to feed Skydancer chicken and gnocchi soup. When I examine her closely, I discover my Skydancer was part of the first run of Rainbow Ponies. I buy Baby Noddins—the precious newborn unicorn—at a game store after a stressful day dealing with my bank. There’s a remarkable wonder evoked through collecting childhood artifacts from before your time; these ponies, older than me by twenty years, give me the opportunity to connect with a generation of horse queens I never knew, but still love dearly, because of what we collectively hold onto—our magic. I’m twenty-two working a finance job with ponies on my desk. I’m also six years old on the staircase. The joy is transcendent.
