Welcome to the launch party for Teen Vanity Fair.
“It’s so cool you’re doing this issue!” says 17-year-old Brittany Snow as she sidles into the interview room at Smashbox Studios in Culver City, California. Snow, who plays the teen angel with the birthday-candle glow on NBC’s 60s saga, American Dreams, and whose dedication to the dramatic arts was evident as a child (she would put on skits and “go psycho if someone messed up their lines”), says “it’s about time” the under-21s got their own special shout-out.
For one weekend in April, Smashbox was the nubile capital of America and therefore the planet, a hormonal cyclotron where more than two dozen way wicked tweens, teens, and hunks in jeans from the burning lights of television, pop music, and the movies took a spin on the celebrity couch to be quizzed on their likes, dislikes, future plans, styling tips, and stuff like that there. (Over 5,000 miles away as the broom flies, three sorcerer’s apprentices from Harry Potter took part in a cozier mixer.) V.F. West Coast editor Krista Smith did the grilling as I sat in, soaking up “the scene.” (I’m capable of soaking up scenes three times my body weight.) Questions such as: How many Juicy Couture sweatshirts do you have clogging the closet? What set of wheels do you drive? What cell phone do you tote? What’s your favorite food, band, author, gadget, subject in school, and lip gloss? What are your pet peeves and secret celebrity crushes? What was your most embarrassing moment? Do you consider yourself a geek or a jock? And as if this weren’t intense enough, we smote them point-blank with a choice forcing them to take a perilous stand: Britney or Christina?
Britney or Christina who?, we can hear a few voices muttering on the bus. To some prunes and professional mourners, *Vanity Fair’*s salute to the talent, potential, good looks, mass appeal, and bankable power of Hollywood youth will be seen as another sign of the end of civilization, like Paramount’s decision to make Grease 3 … dying bubbles from a society drowning in the kiddie pool. The generation that the stars in this portfolio represent is the most style-conscious, splurged-upon, and media-immersed army of ragamuffins in history. “U.S. teens spent $155 billion in ‘discretionary income’ in 2000 alone, buying clothing, CDs, and makeup,” Alissa Quart writes in her new book, Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers. The advertising blitz aimed at separating mall rats from their weekly allowance has pumped life into a new junior contingent of teen magazines—Elle Girl, Cosmo Girl, Teen People, Teen Vogue, and, maybe someday, Teen New Republic (“Zionism Without Zits”). Granted, a pop mentality whose formative influences are Archie comics, The Brady Bunch, Saved by the Bell, Scooby-Doo, and similar vanilla floats is somewhat lacking in gravitas. Yet this same youth kick has also yielded Clueless (which set the gold standard for the teen-genre film with its sass, allusive slang, and recognition that Valley Girl uptalk is the universal dialect of smart ditzes), TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Bring It On, Legally Blonde, and the rousing and morally upright Drumline—works whose humor, coltish attack, and climactic showdowns will outlast the literate hush of The Hours and Far from Heaven, those studies in wallpaper. And the sleeper hit so far this year? Bend It Like Beckham, about an Indian girl’s determination to defy the fuddy-duds among family and friends and excel at soccer.
Bend It Like Beckham is a girl-power tale, and girl power propels tween-teen culture, from Clueless to Buffy to Legally Blonde to the new Charlie’s Angels, where cute guys are the reward for a greater, deeper self-realization and chick solidarity. This reverses the postwar trend in movies fueled by the marriage of testosterone and gasoline that gave us Marlon Brando and his motorcycle Visigoths in The Wild One, James Dean drag-racing in Rebel Without a Cause, and high-school grads tripping the night fantastic in American Graffiti (where the fates of the female characters didn’t even make the flash-forward epilogue). Girls now seem to have more poise, daily agon, and purchasing power. The Harry Potter mania may seem the exception to the countertrend, but where would the movie be without Emma Watson’s bossy-boots. In the junior galaxy of girl power, none beckon brighter than its twin stars, Mary-Kate and Ashley (aptly born under the sign of Gemini), whose careers began on the ABC sitcom Full House when they were nine months old. These former tots have attracted a fanatical following. Brittany Snow suffered her most embarrassing moment when an overzealous mom, mistaking her for an Olsen twin at a pre–Golden Globes party, requested an autograph and then, recognizing her goof, stormed off and fumed in a loud voice, “Shit! My kids are gonna kill me!”
For the Olsen twins, sisterhood is superpowerful. A pair of sweet 16s, Mary-Kate (pet peeve: “when people eat bananas and make that noise”) and Ashley (pet peeve: hair in food) preside over the Dualstar Entertainment Group, which markets a billion-dollar line of mary-kateandashley videos, fashions (plus-sizes too), fragrances, bedding, and a namesake magazine. Their net worth has been estimated at $150 million—each. Ashley’s idols are Drew Barrymore (who returned the admiration by giving them cameos in the new Charlie’s Angels), Oprah, and “Martha, because of, like, everything she’s created within her brand.” The Olsens’ ingenuity in platforming their Full House huggableness into a Martha Stewart–caliber brand consciousness has become the model and matrix for the rest of the entertainment industry. Anyone can become a household name in this American Idol instant-stardom world, but becoming a household item—that’s the key to Fort Knox.
Not that the twins carry their tails high with an air of money and privilege. They won’t even specify the make of the Olsenmobiles they drive, saying only Mary-Kate has “a black big car” and Ashley a blue biggie. Unlike the Bush daughters or the Hilton sisters, who always look as if they were about to pop out of a bachelor-party cake, M-K and Ash, as they’re known in the hood, are modest, demure, able to walk without weaving. I noticed that other young stars at Smashbox couldn’t resist taking sidelong glances at the Olsens, unable to quench their fascination, and what makes them fascinating is they’re so ineffably ordinary they seem otherworldly. Dressed in cargo pants and loose tops, they could be any other urchins sipping smoothies on the shopping-mall escalator, until they speak and their canary voices quiet the room with a composure, self-possession, and practicality that make them sound like ancient souls in nymphet bodies. They seem to siphon their belief in themselves from a limpid pool. When Mary-Kate says that she plans to open her own restaurant and a children’s hospital someday, you don’t doubt for a moment she’ll get it done. You’re glad she’s on the side of good and not evil—otherwise we’d all be doomed.
Although a few of our other aspirers earned their training wheels on the daytime soaps—such as Snow (pet peeve: reading out loud off of restaurant menus), who burned diners to the ground as the bad seed on Guiding Light, and Lindsay Lohan (pet peeve: people who are fake), an Another World alumna—most made their debuts as carefully wrapped products of the three leading candy dispensers of tween-teen culture: Disney, Nickelodeon, and the WB. Of the troika, Disney boasts the longest and richest franchise. Its original Mouseketeer club, in the 50s, produced Paul Petersen (who went on to The Donna Reed Show), Johnny Crawford (who watched Paw shoot a heap of varmints on The Rifleman), and—be still, my pacemaker—Annette Funicello, whose sweater-stretching progress through puberty gave millions of baby-boomer boys reason to hope, later pounding the wild surf with Frankie Avalon in Bikini Beach and other affronts to the brain. The revamped Mickey Mouse club of 1989 showcased a rookie division of heartthrobs and undulators who would tramp all over the record charts in the following decade. Christina Aguilera … Britney Spears … Justin Timberlake … they trailed pride and glory from the hallowed halls of the rodent academy into the concert arenas. (Another postmodern Mouseketeer, Keri Russell, sprouted ringlets as the Pre-Raphaelite student of Felicity.)
A. J. Trauth, Emily VanCamp, Brittany Snow, and Aaron Meeks.
Among the current darlings of the Disney Channel are Raven (pet peeve: fake people), star of the popular series That’s So Raven, and the gifted, born-to-party Shia LaBeouf (pet peeve: filming when it’s cold), who gave an affecting, nuanced performance as the developmentally disabled brother on the Disney original telefilm Tru Confessions (risking typecasting, he will soon be seen as a special-ed student in Dumb and Dumberer).
Sitting atop Disney’s big rock-candy mountain is the ubiquitous, irrepressible, unstoppable Hilary Duff (pet peeve: people who drink half a can of soda and leave to get another one because they can’t remember where they put the first one), known to her kazillion fans as the adorable teenage klutz of Lizzie McGuire and its screen spin-off, The Lizzie McGuire Movie (which, happily for the nation’s welfare, hugely outgrossed The Real Cancun). “Lizzie McGuire” is more than a character; she’s a commodity about to be converted into a girlie way of life, mary-kateandashley-style. “The ‘Lizzie’ phenomenon has been a badly needed success story for Disney,” reported The Wall Street Journal on May 6, “a multimedia powerhouse that has encompassed not just the series and movie but also books, ‘Lizzie’ merchandise, soundtrack albums and, later this year, DVDs. Ms. Duff, meanwhile, has become a heroine for the ‘tween’ girls who have bestowed upon her a white-hot celebrity status.” The article described how Duff and her mother are seeking to parlay the Lizzie McGuire image into a separate brand identity. “Even as Disney peddles ‘Lizzie McGuire’–branded apparel and other merchandise, a Los Angeles company called Bravado International Group is acting as a licensing agent for Ms. Duff. It is making manufacturing and distribution deals for Hilary Duff–branded cosmetics and a merchandise line called ‘Stuff by Hilary Duff’ that will include everything from apparel and footwear to blow dryers and curling irons.” Sign me up for a pair of bunny slippers.
Cable’s Nickelodeon channel competes with Disney for audience share and as a talent farm where the toothsome stars of tomorrow learn to milk their first shameless laughs. Case in point: Amanda Bynes (pet peeve: fake people), who got her first break on Nickelodeon’s All That and proceeded to blaze new frontiers in booger humor as the star of her own wacky sketch-comedy series on Nick, The Amanda Show. (Bynes’s choice of I Love Lucy for favorite old show signals her game-for-anything approach.) Beating Hilary Duff to the big screen, she made her own hop from TV fame to movie vehicle this spring with What a Girl Wants, an exercise in effervescence that raised the disturbing question “What’s Colin Firth doing in this film?” Like Annette Funicello, Bynes has ripened into full fruition, making it a trial for some on the Teen Vanity Fair set to keep their spring-loaded eyeballs in their sockets.
Nickelodeon and Disney pour on the artificial sunshine and gooey slapstick. The rite-of-passage network for young performers whose characters brave a shadowy minefield of peer pressure, sexual awakening, tattoo decisions, and shape-shifting succubi decimating the cafeteria staff is the WB. Its Dawson’s Creek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which defected to UPN), Smallville, Everwood, and Gilmore Girls have set the high bar for dramas centered on superarticulate teens with frames of reference beyond their years who learn that words ain’t enough to express the emotional lava within. (That’s what poignant close-ups are for.) The young lumberjacks of the WB—self-described “athletic dork” Milo Ventimiglia (pet peeve: “inconsiderate drivers”) and Jared Padalecki (pet peeve: “When I get blamed for something I didn’t do. I think I’m an easy target, maybe”), both of the Gilmore Girls; Gregory Smith (pet peeve: shopping in department stores), of Everwood—are sturdy lads and sensitive brooders. Representing Everwood as well was Emily VanCamp (pet peeve: people who interrupt). However, no WB’er did a finer job of bearing aloft the network’s droopy banner of adolescent angst than Alexis Bledel (pet peeve: traffic), the precocious, deadpan daughter on Gilmore Girls.
Though Bledel shares Gregory Smith’s love of macaroni and cheese, the moment she entered the interview room there was a sudden drop of cabin pressure, an air of grievous import. She mumbled; she slouched; she dismissed the notion of a celebrity crush with the world-weary statement “The whole illusion for me is completely gone.” In this procession of perky extroverts, here was one introvert who had torn off the veil to view life for what it is: sucky. Given her maid-of-constant-sorrow ennui, it came as little news that Bledel’s favorite old TV show is My So-Called Life. Yet once she stopped looking as if she were about to dissolve into tears of boredom, she made the most insightful comments about acting of any of our participants, sharp throwaways about her Gilmore Girls persona and the artificial sewing-machine rhythms of the fancy lines she delivers, their inhuman precision. And her idol is Gandhi, proof of a social conscience and an awareness of an existence beyond show business.
In 1984, two kids-as-devils movies(Children of the Corn, Firestarter)flopped at the box office, marking the end of a dying genre—and the start of a more positive film depiction of children. Through the mid-1980s, studios released several child-as-victim movies (The Shining, Cujo), and in the late 1980s, cuddly-baby movies (Raising Arizona, Three Men and a Baby, Baby Boom, For Keeps, She’s Having a Baby). —William Strauss and Neil Howe, Generations.
Born in the 80s, the fuzzy peaches in this gathering are members of the cohort Strauss and Howe celebrate in their book as the Millennials. “First-wave Millennials are riding a powerful crest of protective concern, dating about to the early 1980s, over the American childhood environment.” They are the hope of whatever future the Bush administration manages to leave unwrecked. Unlike the latchkey kids and Minnesota-strip runaways who came just before them, 80s children haven’t been neglected, discarded, or stigmatized; they’ve been buttered with acceptance since the first blink of light. As a result, “the Millennials show every sign of being a generation of trends—toward improved education and health care, strengthening families, more adult affection and protection, and a rising sense that youths need a national mission.”
The responses to our questionnaire reinforce this optimism. The family ties of these teens are Spider-Man-sticky. Asked to name his personal idol, Ventimiglia answered, “My parents,” as did fellow Gilmore boy Padalecki. One of Duff’s idols is her older sister, Haylie (also an actor), who was present at the interview and pleased at the nod. Kaley Cuoco (pet peeve: “people smacking gum, but I do it myself”), whose skimpy outfits give John Ritter conniptions on ABC’s 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, chose her grandfather as her idol. The endearing Lacey Chabert (pet peeve: people who don’t fully extinguish their cigarettes), whose career began on Broadway at the age of nine in Les Misérables, cited her mother as an inspiration. Ditto Christina Milian (pet peeve: ignorant people), just done with her first album and about to knock everyone silly in the film If You Were My Girl, whose mom drove her back and forth in a beat-up station wagon between Maryland and New York for auditions, a purgatorial haul under the best of conditions. “My mom, she sacrificed so much,” said Milian, who demonstrated her gratitude by buying her mother a Durango truck with her first big paycheck.
Other key findings from our exclusive poll. Teen stars are dog people, not cat people. Alexa Vega, a sporty compact who saves the world between homework assignments in the Spy Kids films (pet peeve: people eating with their hair in their face), was the Dr. Dolittle anomaly, with five chickens, five fish, four cats, and two hairless rats that died. Otherwise, canines out-ranked felines as pet companion of choice, and not just any dogs, either, but pedigreed pooches (a noble democratic exception being Aaron Meeks and his mutt, Dexter), and not just any pedigrees, either, but tiny yappers and heavy panters. Aaron Carter, a blond beauty boy who suggests Tadzio in a West Coast Death in Venice (pet peeve: nail-biters), escorted his charming pug, Rocky, to the set. The nutritious Mandy Moore (pet peeve: another vote for “fake people”), who’s really got it going on with an upcoming album called Coverage and the movies How to Deal and Saved, has a pug, two Yorkies, and a boyfriend named Andy Roddick, who swings a mean racket. Lindsay Lohan has a bichon frisé named Max. Milian has a Chihuahua and a Yorkie. Sister of Beyoncé, Solange Knowles (pet peeve: “singing to the music when you don’t know the words”)—whose favorite author is “whoever wrote the Bible” and whose role of a lifetime is “to play a crackhead”—has a Chihuahua named Shuggie. Cuoco has a Chihuahua named Petey. Chabert has three Chihuahuas, named Teacup, Teaspoon, and Tea Leaf.
My interpretation: small dogs are easier to travel with—they’re like carry-on luggage with legs—and offer unconditional love, unlike cats, whose affection must be earned and whose aloof independence stands as an eternal rebuke to the vanities of human pride. Alexis Bledel, who has no pets, should adopt a cat. They could silently stare at each other in perfect communion.
Britney rules, but barely. In the battle of the royal belly buttons, Britney beats out Christina Aguilera. Though a number of music-lovers paid homage to Christina’s vocal chops, her recent slutsky image makeover for Stripped seemed to have cost her valuable support, though few in our survey wished to go on record. (“I have strong feelings about that,” said one teen star before clamming.) Typical was Alexa Vega, who loves Christina’s voice but thinks Britney is “more humble.” Similarly, the multifaceted and engaging Bow Wow (pet peeve: “people who touch my stuff”) cited “Christina for the voice and both of them for the body.” Raven adroitly dodged the issue by answering, “Christina Spears.” Some found third alternatives to this either/or proposition: Chabert opted for Jessica Simpson; Evan Rachel Wood (pet peeve: “people that do things because they think they should be doing them”), whose performance in the film Thirteen is getting buzzy advance notice, went for Alanis Morissette; and LaBeouf invoked the sacred name of Eric Clapton.
Given this jumble, how can we judge Britney the winner? Because those who chose Britney did so with firm conviction and without a flicker of hesitation. And it was telling which teen stars selected her: the ones who are not just talents but brands, such as Hilary Duff (“Britney all the way”) and the Olsen twins.
My analysis: they embrace Britney because she has done a better job protecting her brand than Christina, who mucked her public image by getting all weird and nasty in her videos, as if tearing the wrong page out of Madonna’s career script and taking bad advice about re-inventing herself by being “transgressive”—a backward move. To Millennials, transgression is so last generation!
Teen stars are Apple pickers. Congratulations, Steve Jobs. The steep majority of our interviewees peck on Apple computers, the iBook being the laptop of today’s pinup. Apart from their supercool style, Macs are the superior creative tool in burning CDs and doing video editing and digital photography, and a number extolled Apple’s iPod as a gotta-have item.
Teen stars would die without a dial tone. In this, they are typical of their tribe. Millennials are the first generation to grow up with the cell phone cemented to the palm, putting them in seamless antenna-rub with everybody in their calling circle. Wired up the wazoo with cells, pagers, BlackBerrys, iPods, and portable CD players, they are the children of the hive, human nodes within a constant hum and flux. For the young idol on the go, the cell phone must be as quick-draw accessible as a gunslinger’s six-shooter and aesthetically nifty. Even keener is the cell phone with “a freakin’ camera on it,” to quote LaBeouf, who showed us a shot of himself with Vanessa Williams at a Laker game. Others had pictures of their friends filed so that, when a pal phoned, his or her face would pop up on the little screen and they could make believe they were talking to the pest in person.
Teen stars are traditionalists. Yes, they cite Avril Lavigne, Boomkat, U2, Radiohead, and obscure bangers heard mostly on 1,000-watt college stations, but the surprise was the number for whom noble moldy oldies from the 60s and 70s still hold sway. It’s as if the intervening decades dropped down the rabbit hole. Millennials look to the 60s as the lost horizon of transcendental possibilities, when the doors of perception were flung open and guitars were brandished like flaming swords. Cool dude A. J. Trauth (pet peeve: lack of organization) names Mick Jagger as his favorite pretty-boy, Jimi Hendrix as his favorite guy’s guy, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Derek and the Dominos, and the Grateful Dead as his favorite bands, and Jimi Hendrix as his idol. (His celebrity crush is Barbra Streisand—go figure.) LaBeouf vacillates between Cream and Deep Purple as his favorite churners. Gregory Smith’s fave singer-songwriters are Bob Dylan and Cat Stevens. And retro taste is not strictly a guy thing or restricted to music. Snow longs to play Marilyn Monroe and is enraptured by the legend of James Dean, as is Lohan (“I love James Dean”). Emily VanCamp venerates Audrey Hepburn.
When it comes to contemporaries (you know, stars who are around, like, now), one name, one face, one set of gleaming choppers and blond follicles, walks tallest down the red carpet of young Hollywood’s esteem:
Everybody loves the Brad. Guys and gals alike are infatuated with the Errol Flynn antics of Colin Farrell, whose wanton abandon seems refreshing in these prissy times (“He’s a wild-ass drunk, which is always fun,” said one boy actor). Others ooh over Ewan McGregor, Heath Ledger, and Justin Timberlake, while Hilary Duff has it major bad for soccer’s charismatic David Beckham, hastily iterating her respect for Becks’s wife, Posh Spice (Millennials honor the marital bonds). All of these studly wonders, however, were also-rans to the Sun God of Hollywood: Brad Pitt, who swept the board in our questionnaire as guy’s guy, pretty-boy, celebrity crush, and role model. The girls lip-smack over him because he’s as handsome as heaven and has a dream marriage with Jennifer Aniston, proving celebrity unions can jazz, no matter how many pre-nup demands J.Lo makes. The guys are down with him because he seems so regular and unstuck on himself, getting his Adonis face mashed-potatoed in Fight Club, schizzing out in 12 Monkeys, and managing to look mint-condition even when bumming around. He da man!
What lies ahead for the class of 2003? Some may tip by the wayside. A few sexy dishes, stuck in a career pause, will let their bra straps slide for Maxim or FHM next to pull-quotes that leer, “Two tequilas and I’m any man’s munchie.” Some hunks will no doubt take up smoking to emulate Sean Penn and throw away their residual checks on strippers and golf lessons. Show business can be so seamy. But many will wend their way up the magic beanstalk. (“I’m not down with all the Hollywood hype yet,” says Brittany Snow. “Hopefully, someday … “) One can only wish that these young actors are morally and psychologically prepared for lofty success, because if they think they know a lot of “fake people” now, just wait till they get to the top! The phonies they know now are amateurs.
Mary-Kate and Ashley, as usual, have the sensible idea. The Olsen sisters don’t intend to let show business be the be-all, end-all. Once they blast their S.A.T.’s, they plan to attend college, preferably in New York City. They’ve got their priorities straight. First, a good education; then rule the world.
James Wolcott is a Vanity Fair contributing editor.
