Here is the challenge before you: Name a famous person who is 28 years old. Go ahead. No cheating, no looking it up. Off the dome. Pure, uncut 28-year-old naming. I bet you can’t do it.
Zendaya? 29. Gracie Abrams? 26. Paul Mescal? 29. Hannah Einbinder? 30. You’re lower than dirt. You couldn’t name a 28-year-old if you tried. Look at yourself, scrabbling around in the dustiest corners of your mind for a well-known person who looks as if they contain the potent 28-year-old concoction of belief that they are never going to die with the creeping suspicion that they absolutely will die. Julia Garner, of Weapons fame? 31. Austin Abrams, of Weapons fame? 29. Josh Brolin, of Weapons fame? 57. Come on now, you’re embarrassing yourself.
Perhaps you’re thinking, I’ve figured this out—surely Sabrina Carpenter is 28. Disney Channel background, they always cast older than the roles they play, Short n’ Sweet was technically her sixth studio album. Bzzzt, wrong, she’s 26. Ah, silly me, you’re thinking, she only got truly famous post-Covid, I need someone from the generation of Disney stars just before her. They must be 28. Debby Ryan, Miley Cyrus, and Bridgit Mendler are all 32. Dove Cameron? 29. Olivia Rodrigo? She’s 22, which frankly makes the whole drama surrounding Olivia and Sabrina’s shared romance confusing age-wise. Joshua Bassett, who I’d never heard of before but apparently was the guy involved in all that drama? 24, which I guess makes sense, but is not 28.
Now your thoughts turn naturally to Timothée Chalamet, the most 28-year-old waif alive. He dates a Jenner (one of the most 28-year-old things you can do), there’s footage of him as a preteen dancing to Soulja Boy (putting him somewhere between 10 and 12 in 2008), and he’s displaying increasingly Oscar-thirsty behavior (Leonardo DiCaprio was 28 when Catch Me If You Can and Gangs of New York were released). Timothée Chalamet is 29. Despite the fact that this is temporally and spiritually impossible, it is nonetheless true. Timothée Chalamet was born on Dec. 27, 1995, which makes him a talented, Knicks-obsessed 29. Pauline Chalamet? 33. That was a weak guess on your part, considering she so clearly screams older sister.
Defector is a sports website, though. It wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t let you try and math this out using the number of years a given player has been in the league. Baker Mayfield: first overall pick in 2018, most great NFL prospects declare after their junior year, bingo bango, he left college at 21, seven years in the league, he’s 28. Wrong, he’s 30. You forgot that he transferred from Texas Tech to Oklahoma and ended up spending five years in college. I pity you, unable to think of even one solitary 28-year-old.
Clairo, by the way? 27. That has nothing to do with Baker Mayfield, but is another data point in the theory, given that she also screams 28. She’s always singing about being sexy to someone. That’s a 28-year-old’s obsession. And yet. AND YET.
My contention is that it is impossible to name a 28-year-old. You can try it in any field you like. Kylian Mbappé is 26, and Malia Obama is 27. Sam Bankman-Fried is 33. Jalen Brunson is 29. Me, Dylan Fugel? 31. Point proven.
As you can see, I am not a crank. Now that we’ve established that 28-year-olds do not exist, we have to figure out why. According to the CDC—RFK Jr. is 71, and looks 200—birth rates in 1997 were then “a record low for the nation.” Was this because no one was hooking up in the spring/summer of 1996, possibly as a result of the Clinton presidency? I’m willing to consider it. Gallup polls show that through April–September 1996, approval for the then-president fluctuated between 52–60 percent. I can only assume that people at this time had no time for sex, because they were too busy thinking about how good the economy was. The data tells us that 3,880,894 children were born in the year 1997, and yet we can find no trace of them in popular culture.
Is it simply that there is some sort of cosmic black hole into which all 27-year-olds fall upon their birthday, only re-emerging to success and acclaim as a beautiful 29-year-old butterfly? We cannot discount the possibility. Twenty-seven-year-olds still retain the mystique of the ingénue, the next big thing. We might have just seen them graduate from buzzy indie dramas to critically-acclaimed blockbusters, or make that leap and pick up their first All-Star nod. We might even have seen them still playing a high schooler, if said 27-year-old was an actor on Euphoria, Riverdale, or Pretty Little Liars. Alexa Demie is 34, by the way. Sam Levinson was having her act out doing drugs at a carnival in her late twenties!
Crucially, however, we will never see them as a 28-year-old. We will see them re-emerge into the spotlight at 29, which is basically 30. From there, they can start playing elder statesmen (sports), guy whose life isn’t going exactly the way he thought it would (actor, male), wife of that guy (actor, female), and numerous other roles where they express variations on the phrase, “Remember when I used to be fun?” This is because 28 is a transitional age. It exists only to transport you from the expanding plains of young adulthood to the narrowed paths of your thirties. It is a time of perpetual confusion. Twenty-eight was the year I got back into playing chess. What even is that, honestly? What was I thinking?
But this is digressing from the point of all this—it is impossible to name a 28-year-old. Let’s do another quick lightning round, just in case you think you’ve solved this and thought of a perfect example. Elle Fanning is 27, and Dakota Fanning is 31. Keke Palmer is 32, and Dua Lipa is 30. Max Strus is 29, and Tyler Herro is 25. Heat Culture makes it impossible to properly guess ages as everyone who plays there is infected by the spirit of ageless ghoul Pat Riley. Ariana Grande is 32, and you still evidently haven’t learned your lesson about not picking Nickelodeon/Disney stars of the early 2010s. Cole Sprouse is 33. What did I just say? I don’t care that he seemed like the younger brother to Dylan Sprouse. They’re famously twins, and neither twin is 28! They went to college with my beautiful 31-year-old partner Carly, use your head!
I’ve been trying to do this for a full week now, and I haven’t come up with any. Okay, you’re telling me that Sydney Sweeney is 28. Yes, but she turned 28 two weeks ago, so she is for all intents and purposes 27, while also being, clearly, 29. Jacob Elordi is 28? Sure, but he spiritually reads as a very tall 26. Kaitlyn Dever? I guess, but she has the range to play 22-35, and if you told me that the character she was playing in whatever critically acclaimed show she’s currently starring in was 28, I’d say that doesn’t feel right. Malala is 28? Yeah, OK. She’s earned it.
