Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 10

What a great Cher smile in this issue of “Dear Cher….and Sonny” from 16 Magazine!

Let’s return to the conversation about whether or not Sonny & Cher had anything to do with this advice column enterprise. I had a conversation with another Cher scholar last week who knows some behind-the-scenes workings of another teen magazine of the day and in that magazine (and most likely this one I suppose), stars were just brand-stamps on articles written by staff.

This is easy to believe with the Cher responses, especially considering how shy she was/is. However, I have a harder time disconnecting Sonny from his answers (or from Cher’s answers either, truth be told). How likely would it be to capture his sort of hippie-masquerading, dated sexism with some staff writer on the 16 Magazine? Okay, well maybe not so unlikely. I wasn’t even born yet so I have no idea what the conditions of the teen-rag patriarchy were back then orhow many old hacks were advising teen girls how to flirt.

But whether it was Sonny and/or Cher answering these questions doesn’t really matter all that much at the end of the day. The kids believed it was Sonny and Cher responding to these questions. And this was all-of-a-piece image-making for Sonny and Cher as “friends of their fans” which seemed to be Sonny’s strategy at the time. Their casualness with fans was part of their brand. So we can continue here, like swell tween fans, to believe this is really Sonny & Cher.

If your young life is full of problems there’s no need for you to suffer alone. In fact, there’s no need for you to suffer at all. Cher—and Sonny—want to help you—right here in the pages of 16!

Hi! Here were are again—Cher and Sonny—and we’re as eager as ever to help you solve your problems. So please, please write to us and tell us what’s wrong in your life, and we’ll do our absolute best to make it right. If you feel that your problem is something Cher can best help you with, address your letter to Cher. And if you feel that Sonny can best advise you on your particular worry, address your letter to Sonny. You know that you can depend on both of us to help you all we can—and we’re always here, in every issue of 16 Magazine.

Dear Cher, There are two new boys in my class who seem to be very nice and who are quite cute. Both of them are shy and haven’t talked to or taken notice of any girl. I would like to get to know them better, but I didn’t want to be too forward. Any suggestions? Bashful, Los Angeles, Calif.

Cher’s Response:

Dear Bashful, One good trick in a situation like this is to keep yourself in their “sights.” Maybe one day these two young hunters will decide it’s time to aim at some bird, and if you are standing there you might be the chosen one!

Cher Scholar’s Response:

First of all, I think these two boys have probably noticed the girls. Unless they’ve been noticing the boys instead. You never know. This terminology though is a relic of the 1960s: aiming, hunting, girls in sights, targets. What a bloody metaphor.

There is an allegedly inaccurate but famous quote often attributed to Cher. It apparently was said around the time she first laid eyes on her boyfriend Robert Camilletti: “Have him washed and brought to my tent.” This quote even made its way into the movie Mama Mia: Here We Go Again, spoken from the character of Christine Baranski. The movie’s makers were fans themselves of Cher and Cher’s mythology and this seemed an interesting tribute to her later cameo in the movie. But this was also one of the things in the movie that prevented us from seeing Cher as the character in the story. It took us out of that fiction and we were stuck seeing Cher as a loosely-veiled cameo character (as she has been in all too many recent Cher movies).

But aside from that, the sentiment is a bit creepy. No more appealing than being caught in the sights of a hunter. Objectifying isn’t any better coming from a woman than it is coming from a man. It’s just men don’t seem to mind it as much. This is because the consequences for being objectified aren’t so severe for them. It can be just plain fun and sexy.

All that said, in a previous blog post we were discussing flirting as a dance; and there’s surely something to be said for the imaginative side of that dance….and the playful side of the power-struggles. Here’s the issue: men can do some f**ked-up shit objectifying women and women can do some f**ked-up shit trying to overturn power-struggles with men. And with LGBTQ-relationships, the dysfunction can go any which way but loose. Humans are strange creatures. Let’s not take all the fun out of it but also realize how some of these games can get dangerous or bleed over into other aspects of our lives.

Does that sound like a difficult tightrope walk? Yeah, it does.

I actually think that sort of game-playing works once you know each other a little better first. And you have a safe word. Hornwaffle. There. You can use that one. I’m not using it.

Dear Cher, I am 13 years old and I have had the same problem for over two years. I can’t seem to make friends with girls. I had one girl friend , but I lost her. The worst thing is that boys seem to like me a lot. When a car passes me, or I go somewhere, I get waived at or yelled at. I want to be friends with girls and boys. Please tell me what to do. Worried, Carrollton, Ohio

Cher’s Response:

Dear Worried, A girl who is popular with boys usually get scratched off by girls—simply because they are jealous. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, if I were you. I remember when I was your age I didn’t have many girl friends either, but by the time I was 14 I had one really good friend and later got a couple more. I think it’s more important to have one or two good girl friends than to be popular with the “gang.”

Cher Scholar’s Response:

“Scratched off?” I had to read that a few times. Was that a hip mid-60s saying?

I don’t remember girls being jealous anymore by age 13. Maybe girls starting earlier than they did in the 1960s. (That darn Rick Springfield.) By the time we were freshman (14), even the stragglers like me where caught up in the dating drama. It was the girls who started early (11-12) who might have experienced jealousy from other girls regarding boys. But I think we’re getting in the weeds.

It was beneficial for me, as a person, to have girl friends and platonic boy friends. There’s an episode of the TV show The Goldbergs which was almost a replica of my own experience as a teen. Adam’s older brother Barry is telling him that he can’t have a platonic friendship with his platonic friend Emmy because boy/girl relationships always turn romantic. My brother told me the exact same thing once.

I now think the disagreement was due to our respective age gap. Both of my older brothers had that interim generational experience between Boomers and Gen Xers. But Gen X kids like me did have platonic relationships in the 1980s all the time. One of the reasons for this was because more Gen X gay kids were out of the closet than they were a decade earlier. We were also much more casual with each other, regardless of sexual orientation or preference. And then again in some situations, those platonic friendships were put under pressure by changed feelings. That happened too.

But all those relationships helped us later in the workplace and in adulthood. In fact, I found it often easier to be friends with boys than girls as I got older. Girls, as I’ve noted, can be unconsciously furtive. Sometimes there’s unconscious drama at play operating at a level even girls seem unaware of.

My big problem was often making a bad or incorrect first impression. And sometimes first impressions were hard to overcome. I had to work hard at not letting that “bad foot” put me on the defensive or determine how I would behave with those women going forward. I had to learn to dismiss it and keep trying. Once someone got to know me…everything would change and a friendship could develop.

But you need time and space to turn that around. For people you don’t have the space and time to develop a more honest relationship, you have to let those relationships go and not worry about it.

I’ve made some mistakes, too, when I was young, working through how to navigate new relationships with girls. In the beginning I bartered with agreeability. That didn’t work for anyone. Later after college, I trafficked in gossip and cattiness. That did work and although it was fun in a bitchy way, it was shallow and unsustainable both morally and professionally (cattiness can come back to bite you in the ass).

I finally settled on humor. And I could turn my natural cattiness into self-deprecation and get the same result so…

Self-deprecation is great on many levels. Self-aggrandizement is distancing, People like an underdog. And struggle is something they can sympathize with (flaws are like Velcro as we discussed previously). And ironically, it takes confidence to let yourself be seen as a flawed person.

I can’t say first impression mistakes aren’t still sometimes stressful hurdles, but if I give myself all the time in the world to turn things around, I feel okay about it.

Cher has been friends with all sorts of people. And her relationships with men and women have gone through ups and downs, both friends and lovers. It’s a journey, not a sprint.

Dear Cher, I have terrible pimples and, at times, acne. Please tell me what I can do. I am desperate. Bumpy, New York City

Cher’s Response:

Dear Bumpy, There are several things you can do, and here they are—but you really must do them: In the future, avoid all fried foods, chocolate, nuts, greasy foods, soda pop with sugar in it (the no-calorie type is better for you), butter and coconut. The next thing you must do is keep your skin clean at all times. Wash your face with a mild soap morning and evening (using a very gentle complexion brush and patting dry with a spotlessly clean towel). Carry some Fresh Ups or Wash ‘n’ Dry face cleaners with you to use from time to time during the day if necessary. There are many medicated, tinted make-ups in cream and liquid. pHisoHex puts out a very good line—you can get them at your drugstore. If your acne is bad, see your family doctor. They have some great new antibiotic injections that really work—I mean, they usually get rid of acne from one to two weeks.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

I had to look up what a complexion brush was. Turns out I have one. Huh. It also turns out pHisoHex was banned in 1972 for the use of hexachlorophene. The product has relaunched later using the ingredient salicylic acid.

There are new brands now for acne: Dermalogica, Proactiv, La Roche-Posay and new patches that work well to suffocate those little buggers overnight. You can also get LED and cortisone treatments from dermatologists.

For probably the same reason I was late in wanting boys to chase me (or to chase them all while pretending to let them chase me or whatever it was we were supposed to be doing), I didn’t have very many pimples in high school, which was lucky because I was into using acne-causing makeup and my family’s main food was Mexican so avoiding fried tortillas and greasy food was inconceivable.

That all happened in my 20s. And I remember having an argument with a dermatologist around that time about antibiotics, which were all the rage then for treating acne. I was really into animal rights issues and had read all about the overuse of antibiotics in humans and farm animals and how this was going to wreck havoc on us years down the line when antibiotics would lose their effectiveness. Doctors (like this very dermatologist) were very dismissive of animal rights intellectuals at the time and their ideas. I lost the argument and used the antibiotics but those arguments did win-out 30 to 40 years later and now doctors take it for granted that we’ve overused antibiotics. I don’t even see that as a recommendation for treatment for acne these days.

In the mid-1980s, one or both (I can’t remember) of Cher’s former managers, Charlie Greene and Brian Stone, gave a tell-all interview about Cher to one of the tabloids (The Enquirer or Star). It was pretty mean. One of the things mentioned was how much junk food Cher ate in the 1960s and how bad her acne was.

The only letter I’ve ever sent to Cher was over this article. I was 12 or 13 and was incensed by it. God knows what rant about the article I sent off. I got back a thank-you on a postcard.

But Cher has been very open about her love of Jack-in-the-Box tacos and her now-occasional indulgence of them.

She’s also been open about the acne she had in the early 1970s when The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour started and the heavy makeup caused her skin to break out. You can sometimes catch a glimpse of that situation during close-ups in early solo numbers. It was around that time that Cher became interested in skin care, an interest that led her to launch her own skin care product line, Aquasentials, in the 1990s.

Dear Sonny, I would like your honest opinion. I have a good complexion, a nice figure and am fairly cute, but I have one thing boys hate—I wear glasses! I can’t stand them, but I can’t see without them. I just lost two boyfriends because of them. I am 14 and really dig guys, but my four-eyes make me lose my cool. Help!, Chicago, Ill.

Sonny’s Response:

Dear Help!, Hold on there a minute. Wearing glasses may bother but you, but it’s not all that big a problem. First off, eyeglasses are very in and very groovy looking these days, as we all know. Maybe you ought to look a little deeper. Maybe you are losing those guys you dig because of some other reason—one you won’t even admit to yourself as yet. Give it some thought. Now, if the fact is you have to wear really thick lenses, I can only suggest that you get your parents to take you to a good optometrist who will advise you as to whether or not you can wear contact lenses. Many, many people wear them and love them. (John Lennon and Mark Lindsay do.) Why don’t you give it a go?

Cher Scholar’s Response:

One time I was working as a receptionist for a interior designer in St. Louis. One of their clients, a gay male designer, once called and referred to me as “the girl with the glasses.” I found this horrifying and had contacts within a week.

But as I learned from Mr. Cher Scholar years later, some people have a fetish for girls who wear glasses. After all, this was a major plot-point of Adam Ant’s video for “Goody Two Shoes.” And then there’s the character of Bailey in the TV show WCRP in Cincinnati. Mr. Cher Scholar explained to me one day that some men found her much more attractive than the Jennifer Marlow character. I found this impossible to believe because Loni Anderson was such a phenomenon at the time.

So I went online and found out there’s a whole group of guys who feel this way. Apparently, they’re more into the girl next door than the sexy mama. Huh. Each to his own.

Cher can really work some glasses. And they were a good prop for her character in the movie Suspect.

Dear Sonny, I am 13 years old and have an unusual problem. I am really very ugly. People tell I’m cute just to make me feel good. I only wish I could live up to what they say, but no matter what I do—like try different haircombs or makeup—I just seem to get uglier. Please help me. Ugly, Miami, Fla.

Sonny’s Response:

Dear Ugly, I have said this before and I repeat: there is beauty in each and every one of us. If you would just stop dwelling on your bad points, perhaps your good points would start shining through. The best advice I can give you is to be yourself, to accept yourself and to be honest (but optimistic) in everything you do. Each individual is unique; each of us is endowed with God’s great gift of life, and each of us has a mission to fulfill while we are here. In other words, there is a purpose and meaning to all things and all individuals. Don’t deny yours and yourself. You don’t have to be a hippy or be in with the in crowd. An exterior beauty is something that fades, whereas inner beauty grows and grows as the years go by.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

You don’t have to be a hippie? Who said you had to be a hippie? What’s that got to do with anything?

I’m still working my way through the Susan Day book. I had to skip the end of the section about boys. It was too much, except for the “so you want to date a star” chapter which was a real page turner, not least because it brought comments and suggestions in again from David Cassidy who was the teen idol of the day. Oddly though Susan Dey did not consider herself a star worthy of consideration in that chapter.

And she was every bit a star. Full disclosure, I haven’t seen episodes of The Partridge Family. Well, maybe one episode on VH-1 decades later when that channel went retro in the mid-1990s. My local stations in St. Louis didn’t carry The Partridge Family during the years I was watching after-school TV. And I watched a lot of it. Even My Three Sons which I hated and Gilligan’s Island which I was ambivalent about. I was definitely on team Marsha as a result because I watched The Brady Bunch hundreds of times.

But I also didn’t care for the Reuben Kincaid character at all or Danny Bonaduce or the two little kids or Shirley Jones. I basically only liked David Cassidy, Susan Dey and the bus. In fact, if the show could have been just about the bus, I would have been thrilled. I was a real fan of the bus.

In any case, the next section of the Susan Dey book gets much better. Things improve after she moves on to beauty tricks. She talks about a simple-style of beauty, avoiding a lot of makeup. She talks about radiance. Which is akin to my idea of energy. Some people don’t have all the right facial features in all the “right” places, but they radiate a beautiful energy.

Also, we can’t ever see ourselves how others see us. Cher, throughout her life, has labeled herself ugly, as a child to her mother, on the 1978 TV special recreating the episode of her child self talking to her mother and during disagreements with Mike Nichols on the set of Silkwood. It’s pretty incredible but what can she do? You have two eyes and a brain and a point of view. It’s not so easy to trust the opinions of others when they contract with what’s in front of your very own eyes.

Add to that the fact that a mirror shows you everything backwards and then there’s the complication of body dysmorphia for some people. You just have to let it go. You can’t be self-defined by the container of yourself. It’s impossible to figure out. Like the existence of God.