Millennials In a Frenzy Over What 45 Year Olds Looked Like In the '90s Films
When filmmaker Jessica Ellis took to Twitter to post about how George and Nina Banks – a mid-forties couple played by Steve Martin and Diane Keaton – were portrayed in 1995, she couldn't have imagined that it would send Millennials into a meltdown.
The movie in question was Father of the Bride II, and Ellis described how the pair wore particular clothing and had their hair and makeup done in such a way that they fully depicted people who were in their mid-forties at the time the film was released.
One of her tweets even contained a still image that had Martin in a suit and tie (with very white hair), while Keaton was what was clearly the archetypical mother outfit at the time – a beige sweater and white shirt combo along with a pearl necklace.
The image, according to Ellis, showed "what 45-year-olds looked like (in 1995)". And she went on to question if maybe this was the sort of thing that made Millennials think "we have never gotten our s--- together."
In reality, the actors were older than the characters they played in the film. Martin was born in 1945 so would have been 50 in the year the movie was released, while Keaton turned 49 at the beginning of 1995.
While some took to the social media platform to 'inform' Ellis of the actor's real ages, others realised that the characters were deliberately made to look that way – and had a laugh at the expense of 1990s parents who are now into their early 70s but, according to some, were already dressing for that age 28 years ago.
One user tweeted requesting that if they end up in such a beige outfit at the tender age of 45, they just want to be put in a grave. Another pointed out that, these days, they wouldn't portray 40-somethings in drab clothing, but "on a Peloton!"
One user responded to Ellis with a question, asking what the filmmaker would say if she was told the old people's wardrobes would eventually be "skinny jeans, Converse, and…t-shirt(s)", to which Ellis replied that she knows plenty of moms who share clothes with their teenage daughters these days.
But perhaps the most telling comment came from a tweeter who reminded us all that, at 42, Kim Kardashian is just a few years younger than the couple portrayed by Martin and Keaton.
And when you put it like that, it seems bizarre to think that the clothes the couple were sporting as forty-somethings in the mid-nineties were so…well, old!