That’s what Cher would do

by Elyssa Goodman on November 17, 2009

clueless

I met Cher Horowitz when I was seven years old. Though I was a mere tot in elementary school, she was everything I wanted to be. It wasn’t a problem for me that she wasn’t real.

Played by Alicia Silverstone in the 1995 movie Clueless, Cher was a glamorous American teenager living in California—Beverly Hills, to be exact. She lived in a palatial, Grecian-style mansion with enormous white columns out front, a double staircase in the foyer, a maid, a gardener, and the most incredible closet I have seen to this day. To my already fashion-loving seven-year-old eyes, this was the holy grail of closets. Select your outfit on a touch screen and the closet’s top and bottom racks revolve, eventually landing at your choice. With more clothes than a department store, it was like going shopping every day. I remember Cher saying, “But seriously, I actually have a way normal life for a teenage girl!”

And my seven-year-old ears believed her. This was it. This is what being a teenager was going to be like! Just like in the movie, I would have tons of clothes and friends and I would go to parties and go shopping and drive a car and kiss boys. What could possibly be better? I sought to imitate her right away.

I already loved shopping, but I began to always ask my mom if a friend could come along so we could be like Cher and her best friend Dionne at the mall. We would go out and try to look our best (which meant wearing colourful bike shorts and oversized Tweety Bird t-shirts), and hope to find tons of clothes and jewelry so we could leave the mall with bags on our arms like Cher and Dionne did. We usually left with one tiny bag from Claire’s, where they have cheap, bright accessories and of course, pens.

Buying the pens that Cher used in Clueless seemed the closest I could get as a second grader could to actually emulating her. My pen was aqua, covered with glow-in-the-dark aqua beads and a puff of feathers that quivered in the air when I wrote. Whenever I wrote with it, I crossed my legs like she did in the movie, tickling my face with the puff of feathers. I was just like Cher, just like a big girl.

And I took every chance I got to hang out with Cher. When Clueless finally made it to HBO, I watched it every single time it was on. I didn’t care if I had to start watching in the middle, five minutes in or five minutes before the end. I sat there with rapt attention, as if Cher and Dionne were sharing the secrets of life with me each time. To this day, there are few classes I have ever given as much attention to as Clueless. I remember begging my parents on numerous occasions to stay in so I could finish watching the movie from whatever point it was already at. Knowing I had already seen it over 20 times, they would say no and I would sob on the way to the car as if my best friend had just died.

Because I had no siblings and my parents were long removed from their teens, Clueless taught me everything about being a teenager—about makeup, about boys, about driving, about clothes. But what I most enjoyed was learning about clothes. I learned who (Azzedine) Alaïa was (“He’s, like, a totally important designer”), philosophies about buying clothes (“Carpe di-em! You looked hot in it, okay?”), how boys should and shouldn’t dress (“It looks like they just fall out of bed and put on some baggy pants and take their greasy hair – ew – and cover it up with a backwards cap and like, we’re expected to swoon? I don’t think so!”) and that you never, ever buy the same dress as someone else and wear it to a party where they might be (“Do you prefer fashion victim or ensembly challenged?”).

And yes, I did eventually learn that high school and being a teenager wasn’t going to be like this. We didn’t have breaks in the day where we could do photo shoots, we couldn’t afford Alaïa dresses, and we couldn’t “make a cameo at the Val party.” But there are times when, if I’m scared or worried or anxious I ask myself, “What would Cher do?” Then I put on a fabulous outfit, brush my hair until it swings with fullness, apply some shiny lip gloss to my pout, smile in the mirror and breathe, ready to take on the world. Because that’s what Cher would do.