Prior to around 1955, a person would just sort of move seamlessly from childhood to adulthood, meaning that there was no “middle thing.” So if you were 19 years old in 1944, you were probably somewhere over Europe trying to avoid flak (and avoid dying) in your B-17, or you were working in the family tool-and-die business, or you were tending to the family farm. Maybe you were getting married.
From 1955 (James Dean’s “Rebel Without a Cause”) through 2003’s “The Lizzy Maguire Movie” we had Teen Culture, meaning that if you weren’t a child (but also weren’t really an adult) you would do things like going to detention (“The Breakfast Club”), grabbing the back bumper of somebody’s car while riding on a skateboard (“Back to the Future”), getting in fist-fights after just moving to Los Angeles (“The Karate Kid”), or skipping school and spending a great day in Chicago with your girlfriend and your glum friend Cameron (“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”). Which is to say you were doing Teen Stuff.
Due to being 47 years old and a man who raised sons, I had never seen “The Lizzie Maguire Movie” until this week, when I watched it with some friends and their daughters, who are 21, 17, and 13. The movie took place in Rome, where I had just been, and was the perfect dumb, nostalgic (more later), emotionally-easy thing for a large group of friends at the end of the 21-year-old’s birthday. She picked the movie.
About nostalgia: I used to have a lazy, old-person-ish take that Gen Z couldn’t really do nostalgia because of growing up in the Internet age, the lack of a monoculture, the death of “school” as a thing, etc. But watching my friend’s daughters watching “The Lizzie Maguire Movie” was an exercise in seeing them do nostalgia for a thing (teen culture) they never really had. It was sweet and innocent and fun and I loved it.
About Lizzie Maguire and Teen Culture: In the way of all great Teen Media, the people playing the teenagers all looked like they were in their mid-twenties. In the movie, Lizzie was supposed to be in 8th grade, but looked and dressed and acted older than any student at the college where I work. Lizzie’s shrill roommate on the Rome trip, Kate Sanders, wore 1990s business pantsuits and dressed like she was Gordon Gecko’s assistant in “Wall Street.” This movie is in the Hair Product Hall of Fame. Lizzie was unspeakably poised and beautiful, but they make her “relatable” by having her trip over a cord once and fall down.
Here's the plot (as it were): Lizzie graduates from 8th grade and to celebrate, her school sends her entire class on a trip to Rome (because, of course) where she meets Paolo, who is a Teen Pop Star who also looks like he’s a member of Menudo in 1986. She develops a crush on Paolo who has a nefarious plan to use her as a replacement for Isabella, who is his partner in music and (ostensibly) love and looking 25. Isabella also looks exactly like Lizzy Maguire (due to also being played by Hilary Duff).
Aside: nobody knows what accent they’re doing in this movie. Isabella sounds Russian, Italian, and American…and Lizzie’s authoritarian teacher sounds like she’s from both the mid-South and New Jersey. This is disorienting.
But the plot is really immaterial, because this movie is a paen to Teens Doing Things. There are teens shooting footage on camcorders (sigh, I miss these), pretending to be sick and then sneaking out of hotel room windows, driving mopeds before they’re ready, having concerts at The Colosseum, somehow becoming the sound guy for the Colosseum concert (shoutout Gordo), and trying really hard to look nice. There are teens trying to ask other teens out on dates, which is something that doesn’t happen anymore.
All of the teens in this movie are Having Experiences, which is what the world presupposed, about teens, between 1955 and “The Lizzy Maguire Movie” and is what my friend’s daughters (and me) all felt nostalgic for while watching it. Nobody in this movie is spending the day in leggings and a 3xl sweatshirt, watching somebody else play a video game on YouTube.
In the Teen Culture era, you got your persona because of the things you did. Today, you can discover a persona on Instagram (like Grandma Beach Core) and move your thumbs around a little bit, and purchase it from your phone. When we do nostalgia for Lizzie Maguire, we’re doing nostalgia for Doing Things.