Turning Red: How Old Are The 4*Town Members Supposed To Be?
Warning: minor SPOILERS for Turning Red ahead.
As the boyband 4*Town and their songs stole the scene and were central to Mei Lee and her friends’ story in Pixar’s Turning Red, one may wonder how old the 4*Town members are. Exclusively released on Disney+ on March 11, Turning Red tells the story of 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian Meilin “Mei” Lee (Rosalie Chiang) as she starts going through puberty and realizes that she unwillingly turns into a giant and fluffy red panda every time she feels strong emotions. While Finding Red is the third Pixar film foregoing theatrical release after Soul and Luca—and it also was subjected to many closed-minded reviews—it also proved to be a success internationally, as Turning Red became the most-watched Disney+ film globally in the first three days since it was released on the streaming platform.
One of the quirkiest peculiarities of Turning Red is Mei’s favorite boyband, 4*Town, which she fangirls about with her friends Miriam (Ava Morse), Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), and Abby (Hyein Park), as they all spend an enormous amount of time obsessing over the group. 4*Town is central to Mei’s story not only as it’s one of her friend group’s most uniting topics, but also because going to their concert against her mother's wishes ends up being a turning point in Mei’s conflict with Ming and her path growing up. Mei liking 4*Town simultaneously draws her closer to her friends and away from Ming’s beliefs, as she hides it from Ming because she knows that her mother despises them and calls them “glittery delinquents with their gyrations.”
4*Town songs were written by Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O'Connell, with O’Connell even voicing one of the group's members, Jesse. With their choreographies, catchy pop songs, and even just the fact they are a boyband, 4*Town borrows a lot from the early 2000s musical landscape, especially as Turning Red is set in 2002. While the ages of 4*Town’s members are never explicitly discussed in the Pixar movie, as they bring to the screen many of the characteristics of early 2000s boybands, it's plausible they are all between 21 and 25 years old. Pixar only mentions that 4*Town member Jesse is the oldest of the group, was going to college when they became famous, and has two kids. It's possible the youngest of the group, Tae Young, is still a teenager as he appears to be several years younger than some of the others—another common trope of the stereotypical boyband.
In Turning Red, the band is described as at the height of their success, as they often appear on magazines’ front pages and even announce a new international tour. 4*Town mirrors many of the boybands that were internationally famous around 1999-2002, such as the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, Blue, or Westlife. While these may have started their boyband musical careers from different countries and with varying degrees of fame, they all tended to be composed of four to five band members with ages ranging from 19 to 30-year-old. The median age of Blue and Westlife’s band members at the height of their success was 22, while it was 24 for the Backstreet Boys and 25 for *NSYNC. The tidbit of information about Jesse's family life even plays into 4*Town mirroring early 2000s bands, as some of them had already started to build families at the height of their success.
Mei and her friends’ reactions to 4*Town offer a lot of comic relief in Turning Red, representing a phenomenon specific to the early 2000s. While boybands and their fangirls existed before and after that period, every little detail about Mei and her friends’ appreciation of 4*Town points to a period in time when boybands were especially flourishing. Pixar’s attention to detail to that particular cultural phenomenon makes Turning Red an even better film.