We were recently talking on this blog about the Australian Uber Eats commercial and the image of Cher on the cannon (which just made me check the spelling of that word which made me think about the other word and how Cher is so often not considered “part of the canon,” any canon; but in fact she is often commandeering it). But anyway, that image is famously a phallic symbol for many people, although ironically she is dressed casually in that scene and not scantily.

It doesn’t matter. The cannon pulls focus.

Anyway, this reminded me of when Mr. Cher Scholar and I were talking about Cher in the Half Breed outfit (which is his go-to outfit to describe Cher’s sex appeal). Apart from the problematic eroticism of the performative Indian-ness, Cher was just revealing so much skin. Howard Stern also commented on this in his interview with Cher last year, how it was literally embarrassing for him to see Cher perform in this outfit on her TV show while Stern was watching it in the same room with his parents.

Mr. Cher Scholar added something important though: it was also the fact that she was singing astride the horse. And we’re back to the canon again. I began to think this Half Breed moment was more universal for boys and teens who saw it in 1974.

We talk about sex appeal from time to time, Mr. Cher Scholar and me. What stars can tap into that sexuality better than others? Lady Gaga vs. Cher has come up a few times. “I get no sex off her,” says Mr. Cher Scholar, which sounds worse that it is. He means sex-appeal or rather “I don’t find her very sexy personally.”

So what is that mysterious thing that emanates sexuality on screen?

If I’m being honest, the Cher images I find sexier than phallic cannons and horses are from the Take Me Home album front cover or the I’d Rather Believe In You back cover (which showed the shadow of a naked breast!) because they seemed more playful in their sexuality, either because of the costume or the action.

But that’s the difference between human triggers, right there. Some people, like David Letterman, were turned on just seeing her big butt tattoo.

But that shot almost seemed too clinical for me. And the ink itself was not a factor in sexiness, in and of itself. Although her willingness to dip into her drawers to show them struck me as very sexy.

Those acting-era, pubic-adjacent photos felt defiantly daring to me. I never forgot them. I got tired of the whole tattoo thing, especially now that they’re ubiquitous. Besides, my Dad has one. Automatically out of the sexy category forever. (More on this below.)

Cher can be effortlessly sexy, even in paparazzi shots and unstaged photos and I think that’s no small part of her appeal:

Women artists are often accused of selling sex with their music. And there’s a whole fleet of women artists who either keep the makeup on and fight it (Pat Benetar) or lose the makeup and go gritty with maybe only eyeliner if anything (Patti Smith, Chrissy Hynde) or women who take it to a drag-queen level but still maintain street cred (Dolly Parton) or women who try to have it both ways, their lipstick and their badassery (Madonna, Cher). Women who are somewhere in the mix of all this (P!nk).

While I was trying to sort through all this I was also reading some academic anthologies about fandom and the kinds of fans (for a larger Cher project). I’ve been re-reading my marginalia to try and zero-in on how the material relates to Cher specifically (and fandom generally). One book was called The Adoring Audience, a book of essays edited by Lisa A. Lewis. And there I was reminded of the double standard around displays of sexuality for both the artists and their fans.

Women are accused of playing the sex card more often than men (which doesn’t feel true) and female fans are also accused of focusing on sexuality more often than male fans do, what with their love of boy bands, their focus on shirtless, pinup pics (which also doesn’t feel entirely true).

You could argue women face more pressure to display sexuality in performances but you can see just by perusing any teen magazine that most of the pinups are men…marketing their sexuality happily, without much pressure to do so.

As Sonny’s TV show character Alvie might say on Sonny & Cher’s later-day variety show, “turn to any Tiger Teen Hit Beat Bop Parade Magazine” and you’ll see all those male pinups. And sure, those magazines may cater to the girls but I saw plenty of college dorm rooms with pinups and posters of sexy ladies that were gotten somewhere. We all had ‘em.

By the way, I think Sonny understood the value of those teen magazines, which is why maybe Sonny & Cher were in so many of them, embedded into them in some cases. And at the same time you might argue he often tried to tamp down the sex appeal of Cher (as his wife), watering it down in things like the movie Chastity or maybe just not watering her blossoming sex appeal at all. So then Richard Avedon in Vogue Magazine and Bob Mackie had to come along and sexploit the situation. Cher seemed grateful about it. She said before Avedon and Mackie, no one considered her to be sexy.

In the book of essays mentioned above there are a series of excerpts from Cheryl Cline from Bitch Magazine and she goes into the selling of the male sex in those teen magazines.

“Rock stars are sexy. Surely this is not a novel idea? Men can mumble in their beards about the ‘goddamn Tom Jones syndrome’ all they want, but I ask you: isn’t there a hell of a lot of good material for sex fantasies in rock’n’roll?…Playgirl pales by comparison….peddles a narrow assortment of universally handsome, clean-cut, well-formed male model types. Nothing as weird as Ozzy Osbourne, or as sinister as Billy Idol, or as fat as Meatloaf, or as misshapen as Ian Dury, or even as, ahem, old as Mick Jagger.”

I would have to agree with her about Playgirl, which I had to buy surreptitiously as a teen in order to read a Cher interview in it. (I swear, Mr. Paperback Bookstore Sales Clerk, I’m buying it for the articles!!) Like male strip shows designed by men, the magazine was not very sexy. But I did spend a lot of time drawing that conclusion…you know, to be really, really sure.

Cline continues, quoting Lori Twersky:

‘”Many rock star crazed girls have a wide variety of desires. It’s not unusual to find pictures of Shaun Cassidy, Roger Daltrey, Meatloaf, Pat Simmons, and Mikhail Baryshnikov on the same wall.’

.…And what does Playgirl serve up? Tom Selleck. Look at any copy of the sleazier rock magazines and you’ll find at least as many real hot photos of the men as you would in Playgirl. Rock stars are hardly averse to playing the sexpot in the pages of magazines, in posters, in ads, on stage, in videos…it’s all soft core porn, to be sure, but hey, it’s pretty good soft core porn.”

So female pop stars aren’t the only ones who traffic in sexpot. And aren’t we all the better for it? So why are we giving men more agency in this activity? Women are the pressured ones, men are not?

This reminds me that a few years ago I wrote a poem (or part of a poem) about how my mother used to make my bed every day while I was in high school and in doing so she had to face the 3D crotch of a certain rock star on a poster every morning while she was making that bed. What she must have been thinking as she did this? I compared it to me as an adult first viewing a picture of my Dad while he was stationed in the Philippines, out in the sun wearing some low-slung pants and his very fit shiftlessness. What feelings did this picture evoke in my mother? I even asked my mother, did she find this picture sexy? The poem was about how each of us had been forced in this way to experience the unpleasantness of having to consider the other’s sexuality and gaze of desire.

Later Cline goes on to talk about the idea of class, foreignness or ethnicity, something outside of the “clean cut,” something unruly and she uses Elvis as an example of one person triggering all these fantasies in women:

“What made a rock music sexier than Tab Hunter was transgression.”

(It is now very ironic to me that the board game Mystery Date has only one sexy man behind the door: The Dud.)

I would argue that a similar thing was going on with Cher: a hint of ethnicity, not your blonde, clean-cut girl, the symbology of all that hair, and the essential unrulyness. The mysterious, possibly slightly-dangerous, untamable Cher.

And speaking of the female artists who revolted against selling sexiness and reverted instead to playing with the boys, adopting their cultural cues, there are also the female fans who do the exact same thing, the ones who take great pains to appear as if they’re “one of the boys” by focusing more on the music than the performative bodies. They would never squeal, for example, these girls. They have internalized all the criticism of female fandom and co-opted the culture of reserve.

So as a female audience you’re enticed to get turned on by the performance but then you’re disparaged if you do.

In fact, you’re disparaged if you like sexy artists at all. Because isn’t it supposed to be about the music?

But that’s the sad little secret. If one has to distance themselves from their own sexuality, how rock and roll is it?

I like to see a full spectrum of human (consenting) sexuality on display, from tomboy to full-on glam girl, from effeminate to macho, and different looks for different occasions because (and beyond the gender-academics, didn’t Drag U teach us this?) all sexuality is performative. And, in its best display, playful.

Which goes back to why some stars aren’t sexy. As Mr. Cher Scholar would say, “they’re trying too hard.”

Cher’s movie career and television career have given us a little bit of Cher in many different sexualities. And it’s been fun. She’s never been locked into anything. Which is very, very sexy.

As a female fan of both male or female artists, I refuse to check my squeals or trump up much respect for those who do.

As a friend of other fans, many who are people in marginalized groups, people who are vulnerable to this kind of dismissal for freely expressing what they are turned on by, I want freedom for them. They should be allowed  to show enthusiasm for the human body without being disparaged as unserious fans, especially when sexuality is completely baked into the whole shebang.

Here is Cher as the very sexy showgirl. And how very seriously sexy she is, too.