Director Emile Ardolino once said in an interview that Baby was meant to be “about 17, but mature for her age.” That’s code for “we cast a 27-year-old because we couldn’t find a believable teen.” The film’s screenwriter, Eleanor Bergstein, based Baby partly on her own experience – she was 17 when she went to a resort in the Catskills. So Bergstein’s Baby is 17. Case closed?
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Not so fast. Bergstein also admitted that the character’s age was flexible. “We wanted her to be innocent but not a child,” she said. Translation: we wanted her to be able to drop a watermelon, lose her virginity, and still get into college. That’s a lot for a 17-year-old.
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After wading through this messy timeline, here’s my final answer: Baby was 17 on paper, but 27 in our hearts. The movie’s logic is held together by hairspray and a single hit song. If you try to pin down her exact age, you’ll end up like Johnny – doing push-ups in a corner.
So next time you watch the lift, don’t think about the math. Think about how a 27-year-old actress and a 35-year-old actor sold us the most romantic lie of the 1980s. And if anyone asks, just say, “Old enough to know better, young enough to do it anyway.” That’s the Dirty Dancing way.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go practice carrying a watermelon without dropping it. Nobody puts Baby in a corner – but they do put her in a tricky age bracket.
