My kid turned 14 last week, so the Wife With One F and I thought it was a good time to show them the 1985 classic teen drama The Breakfast Club. The kid immediately recognized how much of their Gen X parents’ personalities came from this film. I was a little surprised how much they enjoyed it. Usually, ‘80s teen films age like milk.
One scene caused a long after-movie discussion: the makeover scene. Near the end of the film, preppy rich girl Claire (Molly Ringwald) takes goth-punk basket case Allison (Ally Sheedy) over to a corner of the library and redoes her make-up. Allison emerges without her thick eyeliner, her hair out of her face, and dressed in a simple white camisole. Jock Andrew (Emilio Estevez) is blown away, and the two start dating right before the credits roll.
A lot of people hate this scene. It smacks of bullshit Ugly Duckling nonsense where a “weird” girl abandons herself for pretty princesness. I’ve written before about how much I desperately hate shows where the goth chick goes normie and everyone applauds.
After a rewatch with my sensitive and intelligent offspring, I don’t think that’s what actually happens here. We’re all just poisoned by all the scenes it has since spawned that missed the point entirely. Shitty imitators have retroactively colored the original.
The Breakfast Club is essentially the story of 1980s cultural trauma and how five different young people are shaped by it. Poverty, hyper-consumerism, increased isolation, and toxic masculinity all turn the leads into different archetypes as they try and fit in the machine without being ground to death by the gears. Everyone in detention that day is profoundly damaged, desperately hurting, and passionately keen to escape their parents.
In Claire’s case, parental affection has been weaponized. Her mom and dad dote on her as moves in a bitter chess game, leaving Claire unsure if anyone really cares about her. Her friends are all social climbers who rank everyone, further adding to her insecurity.
Allison has the opposite problem. Her parents are almost completely absent from her life and she has no friend structure. When her parents drop her off, they don’t even say goodbye. Her lunch is Pixie Stix, Cap’n Crunch, and mayo on bread, which is probably something she has been making for herself since she was tall enough to reach the ingredients. She eats a gross little kid’s lunch because Allison’s emotional growth is completely stunted.
When Claire gets the idea to change Allison’s makeup, it’s not about erasing Allison. It’s a chance for Claire to do something for another person without it ever being used to hurt anyone. When Allison asks why Claire is being so nice to her, Claire says, “Because you’re letting me.” All Claire wants is affection without price or ulterior motive. She needs her actions to be her own, not gambits in an acidic social game.
Meanwhile we have Allison, who is likely the most touch-starved person in the group. There is something very intimate about having someone do your makeup. It takes trust, closeness, and communication, things Allison hasn’t gotten at home for a very long time.
None of this changes who Allison is. The very last shot we have of her, she is stealing a patch off Andrew’s jacket. In all likelihood, she’ll be back at school Monday in her same clothes and wearing her Siouxsie-inspired make-up. As she says, “I like that black shit.”
What mattered was the intimacy and the kindness. Claire didn’t induct her into the preps or the richies. They just had a moment of closeness that they both needed very badly.
The Breakfast Club is a film I have lived with all my life. I don’t remember a time when I hadn’t seen it. Like child abuse, it’s easy to miss the trauma when it’s part of the base code of your existence. Seeing it now, through the eyes of a teenager, I realize how tragic the film truly is. It’s the story of a world that chews kids up and spits them out when all they want is some understanding and maybe a freakin’ hug every once in a while.
It’s a brilliant cautionary tale and a triumphant depiction of kids bandaging the hurts of their parents’ world with the few tools they have. For Claire and Allison, it was makeup. If they had swapped families, Allison might have been gothing out Claire’s look. It’s a shame so many of the copycats fail to see it as the intense moment of connection it was instead of one more way to homogenize the youth.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
