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01. It's Raining Teens with Aliza Kelly
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July 2003. Vanity Fair releases an issue with ten shimmery starlets on its cover and declares "It's Totally Raining Teens!" Inside, 28 of Hollywood's youngest up and comers are each given a pop quiz, subjected to the gaze of boomer culture critic James Wolcott, and photographed in a variety of extremely awkward and uncomfortable poses. Our first episode goes into what this issue tells us about what the world thought of millennials as we came of age and who, as teenagers, we were expected to be.
View the Vanity Fair It's Raining Teens Issue here.
Aliza Kelly is a New York-based professional astrologer and bestselling author. Follow her on Instagram and buy her book!
Class of '03 is an independent production hosted, written, and edited by Helen Grossman.
If you have a memory or an idea for the show, please call in at 724-CLASS-03 and leave a voicemail or send an email to classof03pod@gmail.com.
Follow Class of '03 on Instagram @classof03pod or visit our website classof03podcast.com.
Our logo is by Maddie Herbert of @dame.studio and theme song is by Luke Schwartz and Evan Joseph of Sawtooth.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
birthday August 18th 1989 sign Leo home town New York New York number of juicy outfits
Introduction to the Class of O3 Podcast
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to the Class of O3 podcast. It's orientation week here at the Class of O3. It's our very first episode of the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Significant Events of 2003
00:00:34
Speaker
I'm your host slash classmate, Helen Grossman, and each week on this show we'll discuss one or more subject that made 2003 an insanely and uniquely special year.
00:00:45
Speaker
Just to name a few of the things that we'll be obsessing over together throughout the course of this show. The Iraq war began. MySpace was founded. iTunes launched. Beyonce, Justin Timberlake both went solo. Heya was the number one song on iTunes. The Killers sang Mr. Brightside and the White Stripes released Seven Nation Army.
00:01:05
Speaker
Johnny Depp was a pirate. Nemo was found. The O.C. and Arrested Development, the Chappelle Show, Ollie G. Show all premiered. There were tragedies, too. The Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, SARS, the creation of ice, low-rise jeans, French fries were renamed Freedom Fries, and Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California. Do I need to go on? Okay, no problem.
00:01:33
Speaker
Reality television was defining itself as shows like America's Next Top Model, Newlyweds, Punk, The Bachelorette, The Simple Life, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. They all had their first and sometimes their last season.
Cultural Shift Post-Y2K and 9-11
00:01:47
Speaker
And the fashion. Uggs, juicy sweatsuits, the hottest accessories were a sidekick phone and a chihuahua that fit in your purse.
00:01:56
Speaker
As I started doing research about 2003 and thinking back on my own memories of the time, I couldn't shake this feeling that something exceptional happened that year. It felt like there was a culture shift after Y2K and 9-11 that actually marked the beginning of the new millennium. This week, in our very first lesson, we're going to talk about the Vanity Fair July 2003 issue titled, It's Totally Raining Teens.
00:02:26
Speaker
And as we embark on this journey of 2003 discovery, I thought it would be a good idea to locate the environment in which millennials came of age, since we do make up the largest generational cohort in America.
00:02:40
Speaker
It's not just about what culture was telling us to buy or how to dress or what music to listen to, but really how the generation as we grew into young adulthood was viewed by the adults in the room.
Millennials in 2003: Vanity Fair's Perspective
00:02:54
Speaker
Before my special guests and I do our close reading on It's Raining Teens, let's set the scene around the general perception of millennials in 2003.
00:03:02
Speaker
In the very beginning of the article that we're going to be discussing in this episode, the author James Wolcott quotes a statistic from a recently published book called Branded, The Buying and Selling of Teens.
00:03:15
Speaker
U.S. teens spent $155 billion in discretionary income in 2000 alone, buying clothing, CDs, and makeup, the article quotes from the book by Alyssa Court, which came out in January 2003. What the article doesn't quote is the point that Court, the author, was actually trying to make in her book.
00:03:39
Speaker
This is the context from branded the buying and selling of teens. Over the last decade, there has been an exponential increase in the intensity that manufacturers employ to sell their stuff to the young. Raised by commodity culture from the cradle, teens' dependably fragile self-image and their need to belong to groups are perfect qualities for advertisers to exploit.
00:04:05
Speaker
these and other developments have had profound and negative consequences on millennials. Although as a society at large we are inundated by marketing, consuming, and finding self-definition in logos and products, teens are the most troubling case study.
00:04:24
Speaker
So that's the context that James Wilcott and Vanity Fair completely ignored, choosing instead to poke fun at the insecurity of teenagers through this article and photoshoot that they do, as well as perpetuating this cycle of consumerism by making so much of the article about
00:04:43
Speaker
how many juicy couture sweatsuits, and which type of phone each teen idol owns. And we'll get into that a lot more throughout the episode. But just three years earlier in the year 2000, the very first book about millennials was published. It's called Millennials Rising, and the authors Neil Howe and William Strauss discuss the ways in which the millennial generation depart from the precedent set by Gen X.
00:05:10
Speaker
Before the challenging end of the Bush era and the Great Recession in 08 jaded millennials, the authors of Millennials Rising call millennials a good news revolution.
Millennials Rising: Predictions for a Generation
00:05:20
Speaker
There was a sense as millennials grew up that we were on the cutting edge of history. A sense that translated to a newfound sense of teamwork, making a difference,
00:05:29
Speaker
hopefulness. Because this isn't a class of 08 podcast yet, we won't get into the ways in which this sunny millennial outlook transformed as the 2000s progressed. The authors in the book try to chart out the millennial life cycle when millennials will dominate political and social institutions.
00:05:53
Speaker
In 2000, the first millennials graduated from high school. By 2003, they had reached legal drinking age. Some of the predictions that the authors make for the first decade of the 2000s, or the OOs, as the author called them,
00:06:08
Speaker
Hot music will become more melodic and singable. Sitcoms will become more melodramatic and wholesome. As more college-bound students from the US and around the world compete for a fixed number of spots, the authors predict that elite schools will become more selective. Their average SAT scores will rise.
00:06:28
Speaker
And rejected students and their parents will complain about perceived unfairness in admissions. And this is true. This comes to a head in 2003 when the Supreme Court rules on the famous University of Michigan affirmative action case. The authors say that what millennials decide is acceptable will be transformed, cleaned up, and domesticated, giving a lasting stamp of social approval, no longer considered dangerous.
00:06:55
Speaker
And it's particularly amazing reading this text from 2000 when, from where I'm sitting, there are multiple marijuana dispensaries and ketamine clinics within walking distance from my house. The authors also talk about how millennials will make the internet and technologies less chaotic, more reliable. They'll develop community networks and devices that help simplify the quote-unquote info sphere.
00:07:24
Speaker
Obviously, not all the predictions or assessments made in this 2000 book about millennials were correct or ended up coming true. The authors predict, for example, that millennials will turn away from entrepreneurship and freelancing. And we all know that's just very far from what actually happened.
00:07:48
Speaker
They also say that millennials will re-domesticate dating and place a renewed emphasis on manners, modesty, and gendered courtship practices.
00:08:00
Speaker
So with that, it feels fitting to introduce my guest for this episode.
Guest Introduction: Eliza Kelly
00:08:06
Speaker
She's my friend, my former business partner, Eliza Kelly. In 2014, we actually co-founded and created a line, which was an astrology-based dating app and a modern take on an astrology brand.
00:08:20
Speaker
Together, we bucked these two predictions by becoming entrepreneurs starting our own company, as well as participating in the disruptive new technologies that completely transformed dating with the rise of dating apps. As an astrologer and author, she has used her work to promote empathy and to use astrology as a tool that can be healing as well as empowering.
00:08:46
Speaker
And I have to say I invited her on to talk about the it's raining teens issue to talk about the fashion choices that were made in this iconic photo shoot. And the conversation that we ended up having was so much more profound and so much more important. And it ended up becoming about how hard it was to be a teenager.
Eliza's Personal Memories of 2003
00:09:08
Speaker
at this time. That was such a more important conversation than any analysis of flared miniskirts could ever be. Here's our very first episode of Class of 03. It's raining teens with Eliza Kelly.
00:09:35
Speaker
My name is Elisa Kelly. I am an astrologer and an author. And in 2003, I was 13 and going through one of the most challenging times of my life. What are some of your standout memories of 2003 of that year, either on a personal level if you feel comfortable sharing or on a cultural level if there are sort of artifacts of 2003 that stand out to you?
00:10:06
Speaker
So much of this year stands out to me personally and then also as the micro and the macro of this. This was eighth grade. It was the year that I went into high school as well. And this was really the year that I have been unpacking still to date in therapy 20 years later.
00:10:26
Speaker
For all of this time, this was the year that I lost my virginity. I was very determined to lose my virginity when I was 13, which I think is a really apt reflection of my mental state at this time. This was the year that I started doing drugs. This was the year that I really felt like isolated. I felt really isolated, really lonely, and I do feel like a lot of the
00:10:53
Speaker
culture that I was being fed. We were all being fed at this time and with the way that I was, you know, with my sort of personal experience combined with what us teenagers as young teenagers were supposed to be sort of doing and how we were supposed to be living and the standards we were being held to that this was I felt like such an outcast.
00:11:18
Speaker
I felt like such like I really could. There was no place for me in the world. I felt this really this loneliness that I would I remember vividly describing as an emptiness, but it really wasn't an emptiness. It was just it was a sadness. So 2003 is a year that is is so loaded in my own memory and also is a year that has so many interesting touch points.
Teenage Pressures of Consumerism
00:11:46
Speaker
I feel like this Vanity Fair article, teen Vanity Fair article, that we're going to be talking about in so many ways is kind of like the
00:11:58
Speaker
The symbol, it is like the essence, the epitome of a lot of the pain and the loneliness and the isolation that I felt. And I know that I'm not the only one who feels that. This article, these teens, the way that teens and the consumerism and the capitalism and like
00:12:19
Speaker
This sort of cookie cutter image that was being plastered over everything on a societal level made people feel really alienated. Yeah. There was so much pressure to be perfect, I think, in 2003.
00:12:34
Speaker
Something that the article references early on is the buying and spending power of teens. And I think that this is where some of that insecurity or perfectionism comes from is this very acute sense of you could just buy your way here. Everything here is purchasable.
00:12:49
Speaker
Right, and even the fact that the Juicy Couture tracksuits are such an integral part of this article, so bizarre, so strange, but they were really stressful for me. My family couldn't afford them.
00:13:04
Speaker
so i was always by my family but i needed it you know and it's not wrong that that was of the time that was such a status symbol um they're asking the girls to count how many they have you know like as not just do you have it but how many because it wasn't just about having one it was about having
00:13:23
Speaker
you know all the the velour the terry cloth all of the different varieties and colors and then you could have the shorts you could have like the longer zip you could have the zip with the hood like when i got them we got them like on sale yeah or my family then i remember
00:13:41
Speaker
bought me like a fake brand version of it like a knockoff and I was like humiliated. I was like, I can't go to school on this. Are you kidding me? I had no juicy outfits. You didn't? I didn't. I did not my my parents were not. They didn't want to spend the money on it. And moreover, I think in hindsight now I'm like, it's funny that the most popular clothing item of the era was like, very,
00:14:08
Speaker
hard to hide any of your curves in. And like, oh, yeah, when you're a teenager, and you're 13, and your body is changing, like, it would be pretty unforgiving, you know? Yeah, I'm pretty happy. I don't have any photos in juicy sweatsuits. Were you sad about not having? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I Yeah, I mean,
00:14:29
Speaker
I didn't even want to have them and I wanted to have them, you know what I mean? And this is the thing with fashion then too, is that like you, it was very unforgiving, as you said, you know, like, and there weren't a lot of different options for different body types. So you had to have this sort of like very lean,
00:14:46
Speaker
very skinny body with like also like a nice cute butt in order for your thong to stick out of your sweatsuit, you know? Yeah. Of course. Right.
00:15:05
Speaker
Well, okay, so let's get into this July 2003 issue of Vanity Fair, which is the teen Vanity Fair. The cover iconically claims it's raining teens, and then the story inside profiles the sort of up-and-coming millennial power brokers. It's called teen engines riding with the kid culture. And then the subhead of the article is, whoa, forget the keys to the car. These kids have the keys to the pop kingdom.
00:15:34
Speaker
And they claim that the generation that the stars in the portfolio represent is the most style-conscious, splurged-upon, and media-immersed army of ragamuffins in history. So there were 28 stars that were interviewed and had a photo shoot for this article. Some were super famous, others were more emerging. Most of them were from Disney or WB, Nickelodeon, although we do have the Harry Potter crew.
00:16:02
Speaker
We have Bow Wow, we have Erin Carter, and Solange, and Christina Milian.
00:16:10
Speaker
Let's start with the article. Let's start with the actual text. The text is written by James Welcott, who is a boomer guy who is quite resentful of having to write this article. It seems like. Right. I mean, I think you might even explicitly say that at some point in it. Yeah.
Olsen Twins and Cultural Aspirations
00:16:31
Speaker
I'll say that for me, the standout moments are the way that he talks about Alexis Bladel and the Olsen twins who he is obsessed with. Obsessed.
00:16:40
Speaker
the Olsen twins, I don't know, what were your memories of them when you were growing up? I was a really big fan. By the time by this time, not so much, obviously. But as a kid, I just I admired that I was just like James, I admired them so much. I couldn't get enough of all of their funny movies and their their crazy ragamuffin antics. And
00:17:08
Speaker
right after this, which I guess is the spoiler, is when they started their Coke phase right after this article. Because we were synced, because we were on the same timeline. So I felt like we were really on similar trajectories. And I still love them.
00:17:29
Speaker
I feel like they have the most important and like iconic quotes in this whole feature, you know, like Mary Kate, her pet peeve is about the way people eat bananas. Yeah, yeah, right. She's like,
00:17:43
Speaker
She's like, when they make that sound, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, that's probably similar to something I would say. The author also talks about how everyone else in the studio is like obsessed with them, right? That like, even the other stars, you know, the Olsen twins walk in and everyone's like stealing side long glances at them is what he says.
00:18:07
Speaker
It was definitely what he was doing. Yeah. At the very least. Totally. But they also they also say that their that their inspiration is Martha Stewart. Could you believe that? I could. I mean, it was pre indictment. She was indicted in August 03. So, you know, it didn't age that well, though in the long term it aged really well, I would say. Definitely. But they were like, we love what she's done with her brand.
00:18:37
Speaker
And I feel like the longevity of that statement, like they've sort of accomplished something really similar to that. And I was really impressed by that. They really show up as like the young entrepreneurs that they turned out to be. What surprised me the most is the number of times that the author talks about brands in general, like these stars as brands, which I was really not expecting. You know, he talks about Hilary Duff trying to turn herself into a brand with like
00:19:05
Speaker
I think her brand is called Duff stuff. Like just stuff with Duff stuff with Duff. Yeah. Yeah. And similarly, I was also really surprised with the use of the term millennial. Yeah. I really didn't know that it was already in the vernacular at all until, you know, really we
00:19:28
Speaker
were in the tail end, having just graduated from college, which was almost like 10 years after this, a little less than 10 years after. I didn't really hear that term start to be thrown around. It was really interesting to read that and to see the way they define and describe a millennial, because I do think that that is correct. I think that the way that a millennial, especially now,
00:19:53
Speaker
compared to Gen Z, like we are so different and a lot of the descriptors used here are very much what we grew up with. And maybe it's because of people like James who then established what those norms are. You know, maybe it's not so much it's because of who we are and because of what was actually being fed to us all along the way.
00:20:14
Speaker
Yeah, when I when I read this piece, I thought something really similar, like, oh, this is, you know, probably an early example of like a define the millennials think piece. Totally. We end up seeing again and again and again in media through the 20 teens, you know, like definitely through when the 2013 2014, because I remember graduating from college and all these articles coming out about how
00:20:44
Speaker
What are millennials? Why did their parents never tell them they were bad at things? We were getting pieces like that. Right. And why are they having brunch? And why are they eating avocado toast? Yeah. Right. This article wouldn't have existed within the Gen X context. There is no Gen X equivalent. I mean, I guess you have like the Feldman's from the 80s, but they
00:21:07
Speaker
that was like, or like Drew Barrymore, right? Like there are certain like child icons, but their stories are so loaded. And so like, disenfranchise seeming, whereas what they're trying to do with these is make the teens in control, even though of course, like the teens are not in control, the teens did not arrange this article, arrange this like hyper sexualized photo shoot, you know, like, this is not what the teens did. Going along with it because they're fucking teens, you know? Yeah, I mean, that
00:21:36
Speaker
even just the wording of like, it's raining teens. And teen engines riding with kid culture. It's like, there is this sense of like, whoa, like the teens have the keys to the kingdom. Like it's totally raining teens. Like we have no idea. Yeah, right. I think there was also a population boom, right? Like boomers
00:22:00
Speaker
had children, a lot more children, for example, than Gen X are having. And so there was this moment of like, whoa, where did all these teens come from? Where did all these teens with money come from? Totally. Let's get them to spend their money on stuff. Yeah, right. And do teens really have money? Maybe these teens do. When we're talking about the spending power of teens, we're talking about the spending power of their parents. Exactly. We're talking about them asking their parents for $20 before they go to the mall.
00:22:29
Speaker
Yeah, right. Yeah, and it is funny because the way that the teens are actually described in this article is like, at one point he calls them urchins, he calls them ragamuffins, like there is this, like, I don't even want to call it boomer speak, like it feels a little, you know,
00:22:49
Speaker
It's like, what are we in the Great Depression? Yeah, it's the silent generation. It's such a funny representation, because obviously Vanity Fair's readership is not teens. Maybe they were trying to appeal to teens through this issue. But that's what also really struck me, like, who is this article for? Exactly. No, that was definitely the biggest standout to me.
00:23:18
Speaker
A teenager is not reading this article. A teenager might skip ahead to the pop quiz section and see what the answers of the celebrities are, but a teen is not reading this freaky think piece. So who is the intended audience of this? And why? Yeah, their parents.
00:23:44
Speaker
their parents. Yeah. Yeah, there's a creepy sense here almost of like, when are these people going to turn 18? You know, we definitely got that with the Olsen's, we definitely get that, you know, with several of these women, especially in the photos, you know, the way that they're photographed, it's like, there was almost like a national countdown to when the Olsen twins turned 18. Right? I think it was in like, I think there was it was in like an Eminem song.
00:24:14
Speaker
Yeah, probably. What do you think if if this is a general piece that's attempting to like define the generation? What do you think he actually defines other than millennials or dog people? Chihuahua people. Um,
00:24:39
Speaker
I mean, I really feel like it is a, it's a statement of consumerism. This was a lived experience for me in my own universe with my own privilege set and my own sort of like, you know, how I existed and who I was adjacent to at this time, how much money your parents were willing to give you or, you know, how much money you would access to was a huge part of
00:25:08
Speaker
sort of personal style and access. Looking a certain way, having certain clothes to fit that, having a certain lifestyle around you was really pervasive at that time. In a way that I'm sure it is also now, but I do feel like now we have
00:25:30
Speaker
more broad conversations. We've expanded what that can look like. And there's many, there's more, I guess as they say on TikTok, more niches, right? There's more like subsets and subgroups of that.
Consumerism and Millennial Identity
00:25:44
Speaker
So it's not just one singular experience, but at that time, there was really one singular experience that was being emphasized. So that's really, that's my takeaway from it is the consumerism piece.
00:26:00
Speaker
Yeah, that was probably the pitch, right, that he was given by the editor or whatever is like this youth discretionary spending was $155 billion in 2000 alone in the year 2000. I mean, so like, let's talk about what are they spending on and like, this is a huge market.
00:26:19
Speaker
And that does feel like that's sort of the the meat of the piece. The one thing that I was curious about is like, what do we think about this assertion that girl power propels tween teen culture where cute guys are the reward for a greater deeper self realization and chick solidarity? Oh, is that in the beginning when they're talking about bend it like Beckham? Yeah, yeah. The sleeper hit of the year. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and that I
00:26:50
Speaker
This is when I was like, wait, who wrote this? What man wrote this article?
00:26:57
Speaker
Certainly, going back a few years earlier with the Spice Girls, that was a really interesting wave of feminism. But I would say that we had already deviated pretty aggressively from that by the time that this article came out. By the time you have teens getting their skirts blowed up by, what was it?
00:27:27
Speaker
Oh, by nothing. It's so weird that he goes from saying that the girl power is the propellant of this whole era. But then what would the Harry Potter series be without Emma Roberts bossy boots? Right? Totally.
00:27:43
Speaker
Simultaneously, Girl Power is what propels us, but also the only female character in this, in the most sort of important franchise of the early 2000s is this bossy girl. And she's, you know, bossy boots.
00:28:03
Speaker
Yeah. So it's, you know, we're that that's obviously like editorializing from Mr. Walcott, but it does feel like there's, you know, what we're getting a really specific sense of what girl power is supposed to be. Right. And who's defining girl power? Yeah. And like, and what we're what these tastemakers allegedly are
00:28:28
Speaker
are calling and sort of classifying as girl power, where there is like so nothing. I mean, these girls are being like mocked throughout the whole interview. You know, even these questions are dismissive, and they are patronizing. And you have certain, you know, you have like, it feels like you have certain participants who are being good sports.
00:28:52
Speaker
And then you have certain participants who are like a little snarkier about it. But I don't think anyone is like, I mean, if you have this press opportunity to speak with Teen Vanity Fair, and it's going to be this huge, like massive article with this giant spread in the middle, and they're saying like, how many Jeezy Couture outfits do you have? Like, that is so patronizing, you know? And like they all of them felt that there was this sort of like reaction to this article.
00:29:21
Speaker
And some of the girls in it. And I can't remember who. I can't remember who was Mandy Moore, if it was Hilary Duff. Many of them have come forward and said that Evan Rachel Wood is that she cried the whole time. Hilary Duff was miserable and stressed out. I mean, they all it seems like universally a pretty negative experience. And it's also 28 people. That's so many people to wrangle for a photo shoot. You know, not only that, of course, there were interpersonal things. There were competitive professional rivalries.
00:29:51
Speaker
Hillary Duff and Aaron Carter had dated when they were 13 and they broken up in 2003. He also like kind of cheated on her or left her for Lindsay Lohan. Famously, she's in this photo shoot with Lindsay Lohan in a pillow fight. I mean, that's just uncomfortable and insensitive. Like I can imagine being a vulnerable teen girl.
00:30:14
Speaker
already stressed out about your body and how you're going to look in this national magazine. And then here you are with all these people who you're also like competing for roles with, you know, like, there's, there's such a, you know, I can, I can imagine as a teenage girl going into this scenario and being so stressed out by it. And then you have poor Alexis Liddell, who's 22, obviously, there, you know,
00:30:39
Speaker
Gilmore Girls is a huge huge huge hit at this time and she's like they ask her who her crush is and she's like I'm so disillusioned by all of it. And then he makes fun of her for being introverted and says you should get a cat. It just seems like it was really not a fun bonding experience at all.
00:31:00
Speaker
No. And like, why would something like this be? You know, to really treat all of these different teenagers as cattle in this way, you know, to give them these stats and to like pair them next to each other. It's so revealing. And it's so like the clothes that they're wearing, the skirts are so short and everyone has their stomach out. And it's like, of course you're going to feel creepy about it. You know, it's not going to be a good
00:31:29
Speaker
the feeling is not going to be comfortable. Well, let's get into the photos because that's such a big part of this. The cover of the magazine featured nine women.
00:31:57
Speaker
The issue itself featured 28. So the people who made the cover are Amanda Bynes, the Olsen twins, Mandy Moore, Hilary Duff, Alexis Bledel is like inside the fold of the cover. Evan Rachel Wood, Raven, and Lindsay Lohan. And they're all wearing pink shades of pink mauve.
00:32:22
Speaker
I would say like rose. Rose and silk. Rose and silk. Yeah, sort of shimmery. A lot of shimmery cargo pants. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of pockets. I'm looking now at like
00:32:41
Speaker
Mary Kate Olson, and her torso line, like that also looks like actually it was just like sliced, like, you know, and there was full, you know, full on Photoshop at this time, like, yeah, they'll be after they were brushing the sweet was was used in beloved at this time. Definitely. Yeah, you can see it on Amanda binds to actually. Yeah, on her torso as well. It looks like it was shaved. Yeah.
00:33:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's a different texture than what the end of a shirt would look like. We could probably assume that they probably made them all have bigger boobs and made them skinnier. And even though there's not explicit sexuality within this, it's not like they're wearing bikinis.
00:33:33
Speaker
in post that they're being enhanced to be to have different proportions then obviously there is the sexualization that is happening here totally explicit yeah the next year in two thousand four Lindsay lohan has like a huge spread in vanity fair like in a bikini like it she turns eighteen
00:33:53
Speaker
you know, it's like the shift is quite palpable. And it's like you get the teen version here of like almost angelic in her shimmery. And then you get a very sexualized version like a year later, if that right. And as I'm looking on the cover, too. I see at the very bottom, this only looks like teen Vanity Fair, it says with an asterisk.
00:34:17
Speaker
I guess like I'm not really sure totally what that means, but again, going back to like, who is this for? Who is the audience of this? I mean, is this audience for adult women who then feel like they need to compare themselves to teen girls?
00:34:33
Speaker
I think it's it was probably like people freaking out that regular subscribers would be like, we want like, this is an adult content, you know, that they were worried that they had, you know, that because Teen Vogue comes out in 2003, their first issue is in 2003. So there were a bunch of teen magazines emerging at this time. And I wonder if they were like, we don't want people to think that this is like a different issue of Vanity Fair. Right. And Vanity Fair is very much sort of like a trade magazine, too.
00:35:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's sort of an insider magazine, obviously, it's still a fashion magazine, but it has it's always sort of had like roots in the entertainment industry and Hollywood of releasing and breaking stories that are
00:35:19
Speaker
within the industry. And it's like the society pages, you know? Interestingly, actually, the editor at this time is Graydon Carter, who would, he, in 2003, commissions a profile of Jeffrey Epstein. And the reporter in 2003, every single person that this reporter interviews mentions the girls.
00:35:47
Speaker
So she includes it in the article, and it was edited out because Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, said that he believed Epstein, quote unquote, because I'm Canadian.
00:36:00
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. So that also is telling us a lot about like the ethos of the magazine at the time and why these like teen girls. That's that's the vibe here. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Yeah. That is wild. What an interesting context for this. Totally.
Gender Portrayal in Vanity Fair's Article
00:36:17
Speaker
Let's let's flip from the cover. We have AJ Troth from
00:36:22
Speaker
Even Stevens, Emily Van Kemp from Everwood, Brittany Snow and Erin Meek. And they're with like motorcycles. Like these people can barely drive yet as like this sort of teen engine. This is the first image that we're getting in this article. Like what do you think it's saying? I mean, I think that we always we all know that like motorcycles are like a sexuality tool. They're like a phallic tool. Yeah. So it's and you have like the boy girl pairings on them. Yeah.
00:36:52
Speaker
You have a lot of like hand touching, holding. Yeah, I mean the way that AJ is grabbing Emily's stomach, to me like the energy from this doesn't feel like he did that on his own. It feels very much directed.
00:37:10
Speaker
all of these photos feel extremely directed. And they feel like, can you put your hand here? Can you do this? Can you lean back? Can you do, you know, like it, none of these feel like they are natural organic poses or postures that these kids would do.
00:37:25
Speaker
They actually both look really uncomfortable AJ and Emily. The body language is really stiff, except for Aaron Meeks, who's happily well, who's out, you know, he's leaning out of all. Yeah, exactly. That's why he that's probably the happiest pose that he did because he was sort of separating himself from it.
00:37:44
Speaker
starting us off with this pairing, I think is really indicative of the rest of the sort of like heavy direction that the photographer and the whole style team did with these shoots. Right. And we get really clear perspectives on femininity and masculinity.
00:38:13
Speaker
The next image that we get is Ashley and Mary Kate. Yeah, I mean, they were really lucky in this shoot. I don't know what else they had to do. But I would imagine that they probably got to shoot together as opposed to with the other people. So and they are sisters, they're business partners, they know each other. So they were able to just sort of do their own thing and still have the direction. And I also like I can't stop looking at like Mary Kate Olson's like pants unbuttoned and like coming off of her. I don't know why that's happening.
00:38:43
Speaker
But again, I don't think that she would have done that. But they were able to also just sort of be contained to the two of them, which is...
00:38:52
Speaker
Very lucky. Yeah. Yeah. And Ashley, they have this contrast here of like Ashley not smiling Mary Kate doing her tight lips smile. I mean, the Olsen twins never smiled in photos. Like that was their thing. Like, it's crazy that Myspace and Facebook like emerge at the same time that they're the most famous people around because they like really taught everyone how to do like the duck face smile. Like I remember kind of emulating that Mary Kate has this more like grungy look. Ashley has like a very soft
00:39:23
Speaker
There's, you know, cherry blossoms and birds on her pink dress. So there's a very, you know, a differentiation there. She's also wearing a Kabbalah bracelet, which is also so important for this time. Oh, yeah. Do you think those are her bra straps on her shoulders? I do think they are. Yeah, I do think so. Why did we have the bra straps being placed on the shoulders? I think to give a little hint of a bra.
00:39:54
Speaker
Yeah, the same way that we had a thong that would be pulled up to see, you know, to see what was going on underneath the juicy sweats. Yeah. A little peekaboo.
00:40:09
Speaker
In contrast, let's talk about Solange. The image itself, we have Solange holding a can of spray paint up against a wall that's been graffitied. She's sort of standing very suggestively with this spray can. Really short mini skirt, really low cut shirt, and like kind of a newsboy cap.
00:40:31
Speaker
Definitely a full newsboy cap and then full ballet slippers, point shoes. So, you know, I guess there's a correlation between some of the things that they say in their little pop quiz and how they dress them. The first job is the background dancer with Destiny's Child.
00:40:51
Speaker
So I guess these ballet shoes are a nod to her being a dancer. Solange's outfit is so distinct from the color story of the whole article. She's wearing a brown minis, one of the flared minis, and this lime green shirt with a peekaboo bra moment happening. This is really a distinct outfit. It really stood out to me.
00:41:19
Speaker
The setting is different. It looks like it's in a bathroom. Yeah. Like a locker bathroom. It wouldn't surprise me if this was taken at a different time than the other ones.
00:41:34
Speaker
Yeah, I mean right after Solange we have Christina Milian and it's to me it's like we have these two black women who are being hyper hyper hyper sexualized in a way that a lot of the other women here aren't like so overtly sexualized or Solange even being placed in front of graffiti.
00:41:53
Speaker
you can't really divorce the subject and the placement, right? That everyone else is like, you know, we're on like a motorcycle. She's in a bathroom, graffitying it and has multiple cans of graffiti. What are we supposed to take away from that? Totally. It feels like the treatment has really been differentiated here for her. Totally. Yeah. And then going down to Christina Milian is like,
00:42:21
Speaker
frightening, but I guess looking at the years, she's also the same. She's also 21 or 22, right? Yeah, she's a little older than the rest of the group. Yeah. So is this why they were allowed to just basically, I mean, just like have her in a bikini top? Yeah, with like a tiny skirt. Yeah, maybe because she's over 18. But yet we're still this whole article is about them being teenagers, right? So like, even if she is older,
00:42:51
Speaker
It's still within the context of us seeing these teenage girls. So within the context of us seeing and experiencing these teenage girls, we're not doing the math to register how old she is. She might as well be 14. So for all of us who are consuming this, we're assuming that this is a 14-year-old girl.
00:43:18
Speaker
We are. No, it's true. It's true. Let's go back to the pillow fight. If you were to say like, do you remember this Vanity Fair article? What stands out to you? It would have always been the posture that Lizzie McGuire, excuse me, Hilary Duff. I went fully back to 2003. Her posture in it. Yeah.
00:43:46
Speaker
And how now, you know, what I can say is how like,
00:43:54
Speaker
stylized it was, you know, like how this is not the organic posture of somebody who's in the middle of a pillow fight. Like, I don't know, when I do a pillow fight, I look like the hunchback of Notre Dame. Like, I'm like, I'm like going in double hands, like, you know, like ready to, ready to destroy. She's like doing a yoga pose. Yeah, right. It's her Evan Rachel Wood and then Lindsay Lohan. Yeah.
00:44:23
Speaker
just three girlies having a pillow fight for Vanity Fair. Naturally. Obviously, these feathers are all coming out of the pillows. From how hard they've been hitting each other with these pillows. Yeah. So we have Evan Rachelwood who looks miserable. You know, you can tell like this isn't a good shot of her. They didn't even bother photoshopping her boobs.
00:44:46
Speaker
Like her tongue is sticking out. She's like barely flopping the pillow. You can tell she's not really having it. Hilary Duff, they got a great action shot that posture that sort of awareness of the camera, the awareness of how she needs to control and hold her body is really
00:45:07
Speaker
palpable to me. You know, I remember this because I remember like, I wouldn't have at the time felt, you know, been like, Oh, this is so calculated. And this is there. She's approaching this with so much awareness of like, her body and in space and how it's going to be photographed. I think I would have registered this is like, oh my god, she's like, so pretty. Yeah, you know, why is she so pretty? Look at how effortless she is.
00:45:33
Speaker
She her character, the whole vibe of Lazy McGuire was that she was like this awkward girl just like us. But then you see photos like this and you're like, oh, she's so relatable. Look at how much fun she's having on in this pillow fight. I would be really curious to see what the other shots from this shoot were, though. Oh, my God, I know. If this was the if this was the shot they chose, it was probably slim pickings, I have to say.
00:46:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's not great. You don't like it. Listen, I love it. I love it. But I think it really is all it's like, whoever was when Hillary Duff's agent like clearly had control over that because she's really the one that comes out of this looking looking good. It's true. It is true.
00:46:24
Speaker
looking at all the images and reading the articles, it's like the version of teen hood that we're being sold is you can buy perfection, but you're buying it looking like an adult. Right.
00:46:42
Speaker
Right. And being judged by the adults, you know, being still being, you know, your quality, your answers, your attractiveness being determined by adults. It's not teens on teens, it's adults and their lecherous eyes engaging like the relevancy of teens. If we want to look at it from less of a pedophilic point of view, maybe it's adults feeling out of control. You know, maybe that's why the teens are
00:47:09
Speaker
taken the wheel you know it's like the adults
Listener Engagement and Contact Information
00:47:13
Speaker
feel like they are that their generation is is no longer as relevant as it used to be so this is a way of sort of like trying to regain control over something that feels like it is slipping between their fingers on that note
00:47:32
Speaker
I'll I'm off to be a 33 year old. Thank you for doing this incredible deep dive with me into this issue.
00:47:53
Speaker
Thanks again to Elisa for such a thoughtful reflection on the Vanity Fair July 2003 It's Raining Teens edition. Here's the thing.
00:48:05
Speaker
The truth is, I don't actually have a grand unified theory of 2003. I have some thoughts, I've done a lot of research on the year, but I really hope that it's something that we can figure out together. This is a show about memory, personal, and collective, and while my 2003 was interesting, it's certainly not the point of this podcast.
00:48:31
Speaker
So if this show brings up memories or ideas for you, please share them. I'm really interested in how this year shaped your life and how you remember it. You can call in and leave a voicemail at 724-Class-03.
00:48:49
Speaker
or write an email or send a voice note to classof03pod at gmail.com or you can visit the website classof03podcast.com to get in touch. I would love to hear from you.
00:49:04
Speaker
Now one last segment before we go. Each week on the show we'll feature our Song of the Week and it was almost impossible to choose the inaugural Song of the Week for this show but ultimately to honor the complicated legacy of the It's Raining Teens article and photo shoot
00:49:27
Speaker
Our song of the week from 2003 is none other than Milkshake by Kelis. You know, my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard. The song was released in September 2003, and it peaked at number three on the Billboard 100 in December of that year. And actually, the song was originally written for Britney Spears' album In the Zone. It was written and produced by the Neptunes, aka Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo.
00:49:54
Speaker
The song itself? I mean, you know it. It's a tease. It's giving belly dance. Its beat relies almost entirely on a hand drum and a diner bell. The lyrics are just full-on innuendo couched in this seeming innocence. So it felt like it was a similar vibe to the It's Raining Teens issue, at least on the surface.
00:50:20
Speaker
I know you want it. She's eggs. The thing that makes me. What the guys go crazy for. They lose their mind. The way I wind, I think it's time. So according to Calise, a milkshake is whatever makes a woman feel special. And in a 2004 interview, she said, the milkshake represents the essence of a woman. It's that thing that men are drawn to about women and what separates one sex from the other.
00:50:51
Speaker
So apart from regularly referring to making boys go crazy, what I love about this song is that Calise really feels like she's our sort of elder millennial teen who is imparting her wisdom onto us. But she warns us, she'll have to charge to teach us how to bring all the boys to the yard. It's a price I definitely would have paid in 2003. And to be honest, when I listened to this song, it makes me feel like I probably still would.
00:51:29
Speaker
That's our song of the week, milkshake by Calise. If you have a song that you'd like to request for a future episode, please share your thoughts at classof03pod at gmail.com or in a voicemail at 724-Class03.
00:51:48
Speaker
Class of 03 is a completely independent podcast and a labor of love, written, produced, and edited all by me, Helen Grossman. If you like this show, or you just want to relive 2003, please consider subscribing and rating the show, and if you're feeling generous, leaving a review.
00:52:10
Speaker
Our theme song is by Luke Schwartz and Evan Joseph of Sawtooth, who also made most of the wonderful original music you hear throughout this episode. The show art is by Maddie Herbert of Dame Studio. Thank you again for listening. Until next time, class dismissed.