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Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 14

October 14, 2024 / / 0 Comments

So it’s our Last Dance with Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine. How bittersweet. Fourteen installments (that we know of) and we’ve learned a lot. Or at least I have.

And I have looked high and low for a better copy of this photograph, which cuts off the first question to Cher and, like the last column, some of the words at the far right. But I think we can piece together the idea of most of it.

In this last photo, Sonny and Cher wear shinny shirts and you can see Cher’s big rings. Not a particularly flattering picture of either of them but that’s part of their casual vibe, I guess.

 

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!

Sonny and I are back again, reading your letters, answering as many as possible, and (hopefully) helping you to solve the problems you encounter in your day-to-day life. If your letter is not here, please don’t feel neglected—there just is not enough room in 16 to answer all of the many letters we get every month. Sonny and I carefully select a cross-section of the mail that represents your most important problems. If your questions aren’t answered this month. please come back next month—for sooner or later you will find your problem and our advice right here in 16 Magazine.

Dear Cher, [Question Missing]

Cher’s Response:

Dear Overweight, First, you should have a simple physical checkup by your family M.D., just to make sure that you do not have a thyroid problem (or any other condition). Your problem is probably just that you [overeat]. That normally is the problem with people who are too fat. On the righthand page you will see an ad for 16’s Popularity & Beauty Book. This booklet is a gem of information for “fatties.” I suggest that you try it. Good luck!

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Ok, I really hope this person self-referred as a “fatty” in their letter and this is why we find this word is in quotes. Secondly, a booklet? I’ve been looking for a booklet? For the love of… The rip-off smell is getting stronger in here.

Maybe this person just has thyroid problem. But this also reminds me of the very funny “glandular problem” bit on  Family Guy. There’s plenty of medical conditions to screw around with our weight: thyroid problems, menopausal problems, some antidepressants, steroids and some blood pressure and diabetes medications can cause problems.

This isn’t the only question we’ve seen on weight issues. This series often seems to be repeating itself for all the disclaimers about hand-picking unique issues from the bulk of letters coming in.

If I think back on all the come-and-gone medical solutions to weight issues over the years given to people I know, it’s disheartening: liposuction, testosterone patches, stomach bands, remember those weird fat-jiggling machines people thought were exercise? Here’s a funny piece about a woman who tested one out in 2016.

If I ever meet Neil deGrasse Tyson, I am going to ask him straight out if he thinks nutrition is still a frontier science. I’m convinced it is.

Anyway, it’s not PC to call people fatties or fatsos anymore. Just a heads up if you hadn’t heard. The old Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour had some fat-suit skits that are now equally problematic, but also still funny. (If you can find them.) People who watched the show remember one of the memes of the skits where a fat-suit character would say a metaphorical food word, like “easy as pie” or “pie in the sky” and the other characters would rub their hands together and say excitedly, “pie!”

Even pictures online are scarce. Here is a picture from the first one, a skit called Detective Fat which made fun of the show Cannon with William Conrad. They also had Jim Neighbors as a guest once and they spoofed Gunsmoke.

Dear Cher, At what age do you think a girl should start dating? Also, [do] boys really prefer girls who play hard to get more than girls who flirt with them? Why are the flirts the first to get the dates? Questions, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Cher’s Response:

Dear Questions, I think 14 is the proper age for a girl to start double-dating. The dates should be for dances and public affairs only. My little sister “Gee,” who is 14 goes to community center parties and chaperoned dances [unreadable] dates. I think that guys like a girl who is a [unreadable] flirt and hard to get. Don’t go overboard in either direction, and remember this: it isn’t the girl who gets the first date that matters, it’s the one who gets the second, third, fourth and fifth. I hope you are that one.

Cher’s Scholar’s Response:

What about the sixth date? And the seventh? And ugh…what kind of flirt should this girl be? What is the missing word?? That’s a crucial adjective we’re missing there! And this could very well be the one single word that could have changed me from a bad flirt into a good flirt!

(And I think we can all agree that if I was a better flirt I wouldn’t have said half the things I’ve said in this whole series of Cher Scholar responses. But then I’m also not qualified to answer any of these questions.)

Anyway, Gee is Georganne, Cher’s beautiful, blonde sister who I’m sure had the pick of many offered dates. Especially being able to says she was Cher’s little sister.

More on this later but playing hard to get is basically a pre-dating game. How long does one have to keep that up? Some people play this game long into a relationship. (I’m thinking of a scene from When a Man Loves a Woman where Meg Ryan and Andy Garcia, long married, go to public places and pretend they don’t know each other to keep their relationship feeling fresh.) There’s also playful fighting that is a kind of flirting. But those games seem safer in a situation where people know each other well. Then again there are plenty of people who would be bored without the chase, people for whom the chase is the point. Then there are other people who see game-playing as an impediment to intimacy.

My theory is the more sensitive a person is, (and sensitivity is a superpower, remember), the less these games might appeal to them. It’s like how spicy foods are explained in the book How Pleasure Works by Paul Bloom. People who have more taste buds on their tongue (not hereditary just randomly), enjoy spicy foods a lot less because the taste is overwhelming on a tongue with more taste buds. (I must have zero taste buds in this scenario.) Those people, turns out, aren’t “picky,” as I was always taught to label such people. They actually have smarter tongues, if you think about it. And therefore, they would rather have calmer food.

And speaking of chaperones, Cher was out of the house at 16. Her mother was working and she was probably dating before that even, unchaperoned. Her time with Warren Beatty was famously unchaperoned. Who knows who else she ran into like that unchaperoned. Because Warren Beattys were like rats in the 1960s. If you saw one, there was probably 50 more running around within 50 yards of you. (Oh dear. I’ll probably run into trouble with that joke.)

Anyway, the tension around flirt or play-hard-to-get continues in the next question and we’ll pick it up again there.

Here’s a fake mugshot photo of the unchaperoned Cher.

Amazon.com: Cher - Teen - Mugshot - 1959 - Photo Poster: Posters & Prints

Dear Sonny, I am a guy who is [13, 15?], and there’s a girl down the street I’m crazy about. She is also in my room at school. She used to like me, but now she doesn’t. What should I do about this problem? Love-sick, Chicago, Ill.

Sonny’s Response:

Dear Love-sick, The worst thing a guy (or girl) can do when someone they like ignores them is to start chasing after that person. They become a nuisance, aside from which the chick realizes she’s got you [unreadable] and there isn’t any excitement or intrigue left. The only chance [you] have is to become a challenge to this girl. Somehow, make your[self] interesting to her and then play hard to get. Don’t be at her beck and call. Let her wonder what happened. She will either [come] around or not, and if not, she’s really not for you. The first [step] towards maturity is to learn to accept the facts of life. It’s like [unreadable] buddy—what is is. 

Cher Scholar’s Response:

I’m sorry. Did I say last week’s Sonny answer on football was the worst advice I have ever heard in my life? I was wrong. This is the worst advice I’ve ever heard in my life.

She’s got you [something]? She’s got you covered? Hornswoggled? Snickerdoodled? Boobytrapped? She’s got you where she wants you? What?

Not to mention that this advice conflicts with previous Cher advise on chasing versus fighting-for and we’re back in the perpetual mess of what to do.

Play the game, don’t play the game. It all comes down to the power-structure. Who is having to work hard at performing the appropriate level of availability around which people (and their level of social power) and at what times in history and with the understanding of which consequences? Because both parties aren’t being offered the same power. It’s not healthy if one person is doing the playing for another person and the person being played to has full control of the relationship. It’s not true intimacy because one person has to hold back or release honesty only in particularly acceptable moments. You can’t be yourself and do this.

If it’s a truly equitable game, meaning both parties trade off the power position, this would seem okay. But I don’t often see that. I see one party (and this could be the boy, the girl, anybody) at a disadvantage.

But even saying that, some people are turned on by that disadvantage and that’s what they’re working out in this lifetime. And that’s them doing them.

How do you know if you’re engaging in power plays? Look at how you treat your friends. Do you treat your lovers with the same amount of respect and give them the same amount of agency? Intimate relationships should work the same way (just with extra benefits). Surely, they shouldn’t be treated worse.

And speaking of relationships, since this is our last question about boys and dating and this has been such an overwhelmingly big theme in this column, let’s finish up on the whole topic with a very problematic Cher song lyric and, ironically, a very astute Sonny one.

This 1979 Cher song, “Boys and Girls,” is from her album Prisoner. It was written by Billy Falcon. To give this song some context, this was when Cher was on the Casablanca label and struggling to introduce some rock music into what was meant to be another disco album. This song suffers from that tug of war.

The lyrics also attempt to take us through the somewhat rough experience of flirting.

Boys, go and shine up your shoes
Girls, run and powder your nose
‘Cause tonight you’ll be shaking
From your head down to your toes

Well feeling you’re cool is as good as looking it
Thinking you’re cool is as good as knowing it
Playing it cool is as good as blowing it

[I would argue that feeling you’re cool is NOT as good as looking it.]

You know you can’t spend a dollar, if you ain’t got a dime
You can’t hook a fish if you ain’t got a line
You won’t catch the bus if you’re not there on time

[Hard to argue with any of these statements.]

So go read up your books and sharpen your hooks
Then all you need is money and a mouth full of honey
And if you play your cards right after dancing all night
You won’t have to walk home alone
I said, you won’t have to walk home alone

Boys, you can hang loose and slip up real cool
But if your lady has a love noose she might never let you go

[Love noose?! Ok, now that’s scary.]

And if you think maybe you’re too young
And you just cannot cope, just grab a razor sharp
Pair of cutting shears and cut a hole right in the rope
Snip a hole right in the rope

[Razor sharp pair of cutting shears. Very specific. Scissors are not good enough to extricate yourself from the love noose. Noted.]

Boys, go and shine up your shoes
Girls, run and powder your nose
‘Cause tonight you’ll be shaking
From your head down to your toes

Well feeling you’re cool is as good as looking it
Thinking you’re cool is as good as knowing it
Playing it cool is as good as blowing it
You know you can’t spend a dollar, if you ain’t got a dime
You can’t hook a fish if you ain’t got a line
You won’t catch the bus if you’re not there on time

Well if you wake up tomorrow morning
And you can’t remember what you did
Just ring up some of your friends
And they’ll tell you just how low you slid
Oh don’t be ashamed of anything you hear
After all you can’t be blamed when you’re drinking so much beer

[Just how much beer can we picture Cher drinking?]

Hey, don’t worry that what you did just wasn’t right
Just remember, brothers and sisters
After every day’s another night
Just remember, brothers and sisters
After every day’s another night

[Truth, Days do indeed follow nights.]

Boys, go and shine up your shoes
Girls, run and powder your nose
‘Cause tonight you’ll be shaking
From your head down to your toes
I said, boys, go and shine up your shoes
Girls, run and powder your nose
‘Cause tonight you’ll be shaking
From your head down to your toes

Boys, go and shine up your shoes
Girls, run and powder your nose
‘Cause tonight you’ll be shaking
Oh, from your head down to your toes
Boys, go and shine up your shoes
Girls, run and powder your nose
‘Cause tonight you’ll be shaking
From your head down to your little bitty toes

I really miss liner notes. Cher’s album Prisoner was the first Cher album to have them.

But this all seems very bleak to me. Even the music makes me feel tense. And there’s a lot more to shining shoes and powdering noses than is explained here. It sounds oppressive, overly complicated and, quite frankly, an emotional quagmire.

Sonny’s answers have been hot and cold in this series, giving both fair and completely sexist advice. But sometimes he could be very sensible and helpful and simple. When conditions were right, I guess. (When the light of the moon hits the keyhole on the first month of December…) Of all the issues in all these columns about love relationships, I believe the answer can be found in this little, unassuming line from my very favorite (Sonny &) Cher song, written by Sonny, “Somebody.”

“It aint power. It aint freedom.”

If you have relationship problems, the issue probably lies with one of these mindsets. And if you can figure your way out of these mindsets, you’re pretty much home free. We’re all indoctrinated to want to control (or be controlled), to escape (or be discovered), as if that’s all there is to it.

But in an ironic twist provided by Sonny himself, relationships are so much more beautifully complicated than power and freedom or “Boys and Girls.” The problem may be simple and static, but a good result is an amazingly intricate variability.

It aint power. It aint freedom.

Dear Sonny, I am 14 years old and there’s a guy I’m really gone on, but [he] doesn’t know that I like him. My mother heard me talking to [unreadable] on the phone and got mad. She says that I should not like boys [four] or five years older than I am. I stopped talking to this boy [unreadable] missed him very much. Then last week we started talking [unreadable]. Now, I think he is in love with one of my best friends. [What] should I do? Mixed-up, Santa Barbara, Calif.

Sonny’s Response:

Dear Mixed-Up, Some parents are more old-fashioned than others, and the problem can become difficult. As you know, I am older than Cher [unreadable] at first her parents did not take to me. Fortunately, I proved [unreadable] worthy of their daughter. Since this guy you dig seems [hung up on?] another girl, why don’t you just determinedly make yourself new friends. When you do, introduce them to your mom, so [that she] can see that they are nice folks—no matter how much [younger? or] how much older they are than you. Wish you happiness!

Cher Scholar’s Response:

A boy she is really “gone on.” Now that’s an interesting way to say it. She’s lost herself. She’s gone. Sonny says “parents” here but in the stories it’s only Cher’s mother who was upset about the 11-year age difference between Cher and Sonny. But now I wonder who Georgia was with at this time. Was she married at that time? I don’t think Cher’s father was involved at all, quite possibly he was in prison.

Anyway, this is good advice, Sonny. And this was a good question to end on. And a great farewell to our series with the final “Wish you happiness.”

Here is a picture of Sonny  & Cher being groovy to see us off. Sonny is wearing his El Primo shirt. Good grief! Well, as they say, fuck around and find out.

 

Read more Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 13

October 11, 2024 / / 0 Comments

So as you can tell, we are up to the last two  compromised relics of Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine. Both of these final two have portions cropped out of their respective photographs. Plus the angle of the paper on this one makes it a challenge to read. I might just go blind trying to transcribe it for us here. But I’ve tried, where I can, to figure out what the missing parts say. In some cases, the text is pretty much undecipherable.

This one is also an unusual sample because it has stylized  drawings of Sonny and Cher instead of the usual photograph of them. The Cher drawing is pretty swell, but Sonny looks more like Ringo Star on the top and David Crosby on the bottom or “the lovechild between Hal Linden and Cheech Marin” (M.CS).

 

[DO YOU HAVE some personal questions that are crying for an answer? Do  you need heartfelt advice from someone who knows and cares? Do you feel that there is no one that you can turn to or trust? If you answer yes to all of these questions, please don’t despair—because Sonny] and I are really here and we really are going to help you. Each month we carefully read your mail and pick out a cross-section of the most important questions that you ask. If your answer is not here in this issue, please keep looking—because sooner or later we will get around to you and your problem.

LITTLE MISS INNOCENCE

Dear Cher, There is one girl in this town who is a natural hazard to the rest of us—especially me! If she finds out that you like a certain guy, she immediately “attaches” herself to him. Whenever that certain guy is around, she manages to get up close to him, blink her eyes at him and come on like “little Miss Innocence.” She’s really buddy-buddy with the guy I like. What can I do to get rid of her? STUCK, [unreadable city and state]

Cher’s Response:

Dear Stuck, If you’ll read your letter over carefully, you will have to admit that “it takes two to tango” [not that again]. I mean, if the guy is being “taken” by this girl’s act, then he must want to be “taken.” She probably makes him feel super-important and most guys just love that! Why not try fighting fire with fire? Nest time you see him, give him the same treatment. Don’t by gushy, but come on just enough to make him feel that you think he’s a pretty special guy. Sometimes, if you have that special spark in your eyes—it can ignite a fire in his! [In his what?]

Cher Scholar’s Response:

“Get rid of her.” Real mob-boss flirting, right there. Don’t do that. Does eye blinking work? Is that a viable strategy? I thought that was something we did just ironically? I guess post-modernism hasn’t happened yet.

I would say move away from this girl into a more control-group situation, but in high school you can’t always do this. You’re all stuck together. If these were adult office peoples, you could always plan a happy hour while she’s on vacation. Or just not tell her where the happy hour is going on. You know, mean girl stuff.

Hey maybe try this instead: pretend to like multiple guys and even some girls too and short circuit this girl. She won’t be able to keep up. Maybe it will short circuit this guy as well. I mean he has free will, doesn’t he?

And this whole stoke-his-ego scheme that “Cher” is referring to here. I am having a hard time picturing her following her own advice on this one. At least in public she does not at all seem like the type willing to pander to men. But you never know what happens behind closed doors, I always say. And Charlie Rich says that too. People are different in intimate situations, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, sometimes just because.

Cher was madly in love with Sonny and still he had to deal with her continual smart assery, so much that it became their live act schtick and then their television show schtick. Cher’s sass can be seen all the way back to the movie Good Times. She may be enamored with this Sonny guy but she’s not always happy about it or willing to behave. And I love her for that. Do not go gentle into the good night of love!

NERVOUS NELLIE

Dear Cher, I have a lot of friends and I like to meet new people, but whenever I go to my classrooms in school I get nervous! Whenever the teacher asks me something, I just blush and whisper in a low voice. How can I stop feeling that way? SHY IN CLASS, Denmark, Wisc.

Cher’s Response:

Dear Shy In Class, Sounds to me like you’ve got a common ailment known as “stage fright.” It’s a feeling very similar to one most entertainers have when they start out. The only way to beat it is to refuse to let it beat you. The next time your teacher calls on you, take a deep breath—look her squarely in the eye—and force yourself to project your voice so that everyone in the room can hear it. It’s tough to do, at first—but after a few times your fear will fade away completely and you might even find it fun to recite or answer a question in front of an “audience” (especially if you know the answer!) Keep at it—practice makes perfect.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Just take a speech class. That will shock the fear right out of you. I did theater in high school and found butterflies always had a short shelf life; but nothing prepared me for the college speech class. One guy in the class did a speech on manatees and ended up fleeing the room, never to return. That first speech was a gauntlet! It’s the trenches of stage freight. After that, nothing ever seemed very scary.

But there’s an umbrella to stage fright which is any kind of performance anxiety. I was actually more afraid to answer the phone than I was to get up on a stage and read someone else’s words. Hell, if the audience didn’t like it, maybe it was the script. But answering the phone you had to think for yourself and on the fly! And until I went though a week of being a receptionists where phone answering was unavoidable, that fear never went away. (I still don’t love hearing the phone ring, to be honest.)

But the point is, nobody on the other line really cares all that much. This was the point of a really good Schitt’s Creek scene where the character David Rose was deathly afraid of failing his driving test and his sister Alexis was telling him the driving instructor really didn’t care if he passed or failed. “Nobody cares….people aren’t thinking about you the way you’re thinking about you.” David doesn’t believe her but when the driving instructor arrives, David suddenly notices that it’s just another day on the job for the driving instructor who is wrapped up in his own life struggles and, in fact, does not care whether David passes or fails. This frees up David to pass the test.

Cher infamously had crippling stage fright and sometimes describes fainting and throwing up before her first live shows. This is the whole reason Sonny & Cher even exist as a duo. Sonny knew he was not a strong singer and was only intending to promote and support Cher as a performer. But Cher literally pulled him out on stage with her and for the next ten or so years she performed mostly to him (even on television) to get through her discomfort with live audiences.

Here is what that sounded like (1964).

NOW—OR LATER?

Dear Cher, I am a 9-year old girl. I’m intelligent and fairly attractive. I’d like to order 16’s Popularity and Beauty Book. Do you think I’m too young for it? Should I wait until I’m older? MIXED-UP, Mt. View, Calif.

Cher’s Response:

Dear Mixed-Up, You’re never too young to look, feel and act your best [good grief]. The sooner you learn how, the better. I think that the 16’s Popularity and Beauty Book can answer a lot of the questions you’ll be asking as you grow up. It might possibly allow you to side-step many of the teenage problems that lie ahead. Go ahead, get one (see ad on facing page)! Give yourself a headstart! It’s much better to be too early—than too late!

Cher Scholar’s Response:

We’ll have to agree to disagree here. Yes, Mixed-Up, you are too young. Come on, you’re already mixed up! Reading this won’t allow you to “side-step” any of the girl drama ahead. You’ll just start obsessing over it sooner, when you should be doing things like dancing to records and building forts where you can get down to the business of plotting a takeover of the neighborhood with your girl and boy friends. Play some Yahtzee. Roller skate to the pool. Anything else. I’m guessing you have an older sister or you wouldn’t even know this silly book exists. That said, I keep looking for it on eBay. But don’t you fall for it!

Trust me. It’s fine to be “too late” with all this shit. You will have plenty of time to pour over this beauty and boys book like it’s a tome of scripture instructing you on how to reset your hair after having to pull it out again every goddamn, lovesick day.

The only exception to this is would be if you’re 9 years old and have your hot, sweaty hands on a Cher Makeup Center. In this case you can learn how to roll up synthetic hair and put makeup on a plastic face to your heart’s content. Look how much fun this girl is having!

SEARCHIN’

Dear Sonny, It’s hard to define my problem, but I’ll try. I’m a [member of] a close-knit, happy family. Lately, I’ve been the most [unreadable] guy in the world. I don’t care to join in games with my [unreadable] brothers and sisters, and I’m not happy doing the  [unreadable] things that used to be fun. I feel lonely—even in a crowd [unreadable] my friends at school seem different and childish [unreadable]  don’t know what’s the matter with me. I feel like I’m [searching] for something, but I don’t know what it is! When will I be [unreadable]? DISTURBED, Tucson, Ariz.

Sonny’s Response:

Dear Disturbed, You defined your problem very well! It’s a problem [unreadable]  everyone has to deal with when they make the big step [unreadable]  childhood to young manhood or womanhood. All of a [sudden] you find yourself looking at the world through different [eyes] and things just don’t look the same. The “it” you are [looking] for is you—the real you. The friends who look different [unreadable]  now just haven’t reached the stage of development [that you] have—but they will! Growing up is never an easy thing [unreadable]. (In this hectic world we live in, it’s getting more difficult [unreadable] day!) If you will try to realize that millions of teenagers [all over] the world are experiencing the same inner “growing pains” [unreadable] you are—you won’t feel so lonely. We are all (at one [time or] another) searching for something—and most of us spend [the] time looking in the wrong places. Look within—you’ll [unreadable] what you see. When you find yourself, you’ll know the [unreadable] was worthwhile. 

Cher Scholar’s Response:

I feel like some of the most pertinent parts of this response are unreadable. What will be worthwhile?? What will you see when you look within??

Cher was oddly both immature and overly mature for her age. She admits that when she moved out at 16 years of age she “couldn’t even match socks.” But as the oldest sister in a house with a working mother, Cher says she was also often called upon to do adulting before she wanted to. Someday I would like to hear sister Georganne’s stories about their growing-up years. Which reminds me that part of the big Sonny & Cher entourage we never saw at the time included family members who all spent a lot of time with Sonny & Cher, including Cher’s sister Georganne and Sonny’s first daughter Christy. They all grew up as part of the extended Sonny & Cher family and growing up too fast is often a problem in celebrity families. You could see the hardships of the child/adult transition watching both Chaz and Elijah as they both struggled with the same addictions and crises of purpose many children in Hollywood seem to go through.

I am no expert in maturity so I’m gonna have to pass on this one. I got nothin.

FOOTBALL PLAYIN’ TOMBOY?

Dear Sonny, What do boys think of girls who are “tom-boys”? I’m [unreadable] years old and I love to play football and hate to wear dresses [unreadable] play football with the boys in my home town and that [unreadable] me almost as one of them. I’d trade a new dress for a [pair of] jeans any day! Is there anything wrong with me? DRESS-HATER, Raeford, N.C.

Sonny’s Response:

Dear Dress-Hater, As long as you’re concerned about what boys think about [unreadable]—there is nothing wrong. The popularity of slacks and [unreadable] with the girls of today should show you that there are [unreadable] “dress-haters” around besides you. As to the football play[unreadable] I’m not quite sure these boys “accept you” almost as [one of] them. If I were you, I’d restrain my love for football to the [side] lines and to watching games on TV. 

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Shouldn’t that be “as long as you’re not concerned” Sonny? You’re fine if you’re not concerned?

Okay, there’s probably something very honest about what Sonny is saying here. I appreciate his honest sexism here. But aside from that, this advice is probably some of the worst advice I’ve every heard in my entire life.

I come from a sports loving family and was actually pressured to play sports but I hate running and jumping so…I literally lettered in theater which is, in it’s own way I guess, a dangerous contact sport. But I was often made to attend sporty things like swim meets and baseball games and had to be bribed each time with food because I’ll pretty much attend anything if food’s on the table somewhere in there.

But I found I was willing to get into a sport for friends and lovers. And luckily my friends are like me and also not into sports so that basically leaves boyfriends. If they are into it, I will try to get into it. This was initially a challenge with my in-laws who follow the Kansas City Chiefs. Even the girls. It’s part of their family culture and family events often revolve around the games.  The first few years were rough as I had no idea what was going on and football seemed extremely boring. I would fixate on funny player names (Dexter McCluster) and making jokes about things the announcers would say. Then Patrick Mahommes became the quarterback.  That was a game changer, as they say. He was adorable and often ran like a girl while crushing the NFL with his athletic impossibilities the whole time. It wasn’t hard to become a fan after that. Also, Tyrek Hill used to do cartwheels after touchdowns.

Aside from many, many hetero girls loving football these days, it’s also possible this young girl might be gay. There’s a very memorable clip of Chaz throwing a football with Elijah on one of the Barbara Walters interview specials from the 1980s. We all thought Chaz was a tomboy back in the day. The point is there are many tom-boys, gay girls, trans boys and girlie girls who like football. And some of them play it and even coach it. Quite a few women are making inroads into the NFL as coaches.

I recently had an argument with my Dad about trans athletes in sports and he was saying it wasn’t fair for trans girls to complete with other girls and I did agree with that but I was recommending we rethink sports entirely in a non-gendered way based on weight classes (like we do in wrestling and boxing). You know, the way we should have been doing all this time anyway. In the middle of this my Dad admitted there are women who have shown they are better kickers than men. I said, “That’s great. Can women join football teams now then?” And he said immediately, “No.”

So it’s not about skill or a strength advantage. It’s about gender discomforts in gendered spaces (a.k.a. boys clubs).

And then there’s the fact that Cher is a football fan herself going back to the 1970s. She once described a party where the Fearsome Foursome’s Deacon Jones taught her the game. Throughout the years, she has mentioned still enjoying watching football.

There are many reasons why Sonny’s gender-rigged response does not age well. Arms akimbo to this response, Sonny!

 

Read more Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 11

August 27, 2024 / / 0 Comments

This is a very typical image for Sonny & Cher at the time, head to head, a bored-looking Sonny, a dreamy-looking Cher. For some reason, this issue has headings, which I can only think serves to take up some space for short questions and short answers. Typical subjects are covered this week, including every girl’s ongoing desire to have Cher-hair. In fact, there’s lots of hair in this one. You could say this is a hairy issue of “Dear Cher….and Sonny” from 16 Magazine!” Har.

 

Do you have some personal questions that are crying for an answer? Do you need heartfelt advice from someone who knows and cares? Do you feel that there is no one that you can turn to or trust? If you answer yes to all of these questions, please don’t despair—because Sonny and I are really here and we really are going to help you. Each month we carefully read your mail and pick out a cross-section of the most important questions that you ask. If your answer is not here in this issue, keep looking—because sooner or later we will get around to you and your problem.

TRUE-BLUE

Dear Cher, I’m in the tenth grade and I have been going steady with the same boy for over ten months. My problem is that my girl friends are jealous of me. They say that ten months is too long to go with the same boy and that I am too popular in school. Do you think I should break up with my steady and “play the field” like they do? Karen, Wickliffe, Ohio

Cher’s Response:

Dear Karen, “Playing the field” is not all it’s cracked up to be. For some people, there is just one person who has the quality of all persons. These people are very rare. When I first met Sonny I knew that my “playing the field” days were over. He was the “one” I’d been looking for. I have never regretted that decision. Maybe you too are one of the “lucky” people who have found a rare relationship. If you are, forget about those nagging girl friends. They are jealous—because you just may have found the thing they are looking for!

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Ten months! Too popular? Too popular to stay with one boy? Or just too popular unrelated? Like multiple grievances?

Turns out these ideas of “playing the field” or “going steady” come down to cultural pressure. There are decades when “playing the field” is the thing to do (1920s and 1930s) and decades when society puts pressure on women and men to “go steady” (post World War II with a scarcity of men, 1940s and 1950s). Like capitalism, it seems to have to do with supply and demand.  After the social revolution in the 1960s and 70s, this became more of a personal choice in theory, but somehow stratified across gender in movies, videos and other cultural materials. This means that in the 1930s if you had many boyfriends you were doing it right. But in the 1980s you could still be coded as slutty.

In a book I’m reading, there’s an explication of the Jackson Browne video for the song “Tender is the Night” (a video I have zero memory of) and male attention is described there as “commanding but fleeting.” And I’m pretty sure after a thousand hours watching MTV videos in the 1980s, that’s what I expected male attention to be. It seemed a strange era of conflicting encouragements, which seems messier than if everyone were just on the same page.

I remember when I was new to online dating. Men on FastCupid were not exactly trying to find quick hook-ups, (like they were on Match), but they were still primarily interested in “playing the field.” And so after getting the idea, I remember telling my friend and roommate Julie one morning that this is just what people were doing now and so I was going to do it, too. Now this plan didn’t last very long because that very same morning the person I dating with at the time changed his mind and suddenly wanted “going steady,” although we didn’t call it that in mid-2000s-Los Angeles. The term then was “being exclusive.”

The point is, these should really be personal decisions but they seem to be cultural ones. My joke has always been that around 2005 I had a Liz Taylor week. And that was been my experience playing the field.

I’ve always wondered about the etymology of the term “playing the field.” According to Dictionary.com, it comes from British horseracing: “it meant to bet on every horse in a race except the favorite.”

Cher wasn’t kidding when she said she only had eyes for Sonny when she met him. She has often described seeing him for the first time like seeing star-filter around Tony in the movie West Side Story. People who knew her then describe her as being infatuated. Like girls and boys in the 1980s, they did not seem to be on the same page.

 

HAIR-RAISING QUESTION

Dear Cher, How long did it take you to grow your hair? I’m growing mine long and can’t wait until it gets as long as yours. It’s really beautiful. I hope you never cut it! Madeline, Costa Mesa, Calif.

Cher’s Response:

Dar Madeline, Thanks for the compliment. I had my hair cut very short when I was 16, and it’s been growing every since. I keep it about 24 inches long, and cut off an inch or so every three months. If you watch the ends, when yours start to split, cut a little off and your hair will grow in faster and healthier. Good luck!

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Madeline, don’t lose your mind, but Cher did cut her hair. A few times.

My summer neighborhood friends Diana and Lillian both had beautiful long black hair and one day Diana taught us how to cut off our split ends. The Susan Dey book also reminds me we used to shampoo twice every day (a thing called repeat) and we used a thing called creme rinse (before they invented conditioner). Beauty trends are their own circle of madness. Within the last ten years, coconut was the thing for conditioners. Then it was avocado. Then it was minerals from the Dead Sea. Years from now it will be coconut again.

It’s interesting Cher had a target of 24 inches. So specific. Hair was a big deal in the Sonny & Cher mythology from the beginning. Cher’s long hair, as this column has shown, was much envied. And part of the S&C story involved Sonny’s hair as well and the altercations he had with other people (mostly men, I’m assuming) over the length of it. This was mentioned as the reason “Laugh at Me” was composed, a restaurant dust-up over how Sonny & Cher looked. And Sonny’s hair wasn’t ever really all that long.

But hair is also mentioned in “I Got You Babe,” (“let them say you’re hair’s too long”), and in “Somebody,” (“It aint long hair. It ain’t short hair”), and, as Cher scholar Robrt reminded me, the IGUB-copycat song, “But You’re Mine,” (‘that your hair isn’t combed all the time”).

I have never liked the song “But You’re Mine.” It’s a sweet sentiment until it gets nonsensical. The part about “they’ll have to blow their mind”—what does that even mean?

And this line really bugs me, “you’re not real pretty, but you belong to me” as if they would be somehow unlovable if they didn’t belong to each other. I guess possession is nine-tenths of love as well as the law.

Speaking of hair, Sonny shirtless alert….

I actually love pictures of Sonny and Cher in swimming pools. This colorful image was posted this week on the Sonny Bono Facebook page with this back story:

“This photograph was made for McCall’s magazine’s “Teen Idols” story in 1966. Photographer Art Kane strapped himself into full scuba gear and weighted himself down at the bottom of Sonny and Cher’s Beverly Hills pool. He took hundreds of pictures until he got ‘The One’.;

 

NASTY-NEPHEW

Dear Cher, I am 14 years old and I have a five-year old nephew. He is pretty nice most of the time, but when my boy friend comes over he turns into a real monster! He embarrasses me, bites me and won’t leave me alone for a minute. What can I do? Aunt-in-Distress, Lafayette, La.

Cher’s Response:

Dear Aunt-in-Distress, Sounds to me as though your pint-size nephew has a king-size crush—on you! He is being a pest because he is jealous of the attention you give to your boy friend. This is natural for a boy his age. (You should hear Sonny talk about the crush he had on his third-grade teacher!) Try to ignore those painful punches if you can, and I bet your nephew gets tired of his “games.” He’s only playing them to bother you. Don’t let him!

Cher Scholar’s Response:

I’m trying to remember myself hanging around my brothers when they brought their girlfriends to our house. I attached myself to my older brother’s cheerleader girlfriend like a barnacle sister and here we are today with that. (I really wanted a sister.) Randy had more sense than to bring his girlfriends around, but I do remember a pretty girl named Julie. They came to the house to take homecoming pictures. She was shy but friendly with me. I’m sure I was a pest, just as I was when my brother’s friends were around. I had a crush on one of Randy’s friends. Plus, they were very funny and I wanted to be around the comedy routines.

But I had the opposite problem too, older brothers who teased my boyfriend. That doesn’t always end well either.

Then there’s the issue we discussed a few columns back: where is the line between being a pest and being a jerk? Some teasing seems mean or rude to some people and like foreplay to others.

A quote is going around Twitter that says, “Never tell a little girl that when a boy is mean or rude to her it’s because he has a crush on her. Don’t teach her that abuse is a sign of love.”

I can understand the problem. I was told that by my mother all the time. The point was they wouldn’t give you trouble if they didn’t like you. And I think that’s often true…to a point. Some boys are just teasing. But others are real bullies. And you have to learn to tell the difference. Boys have to do this too, in their own way. You could say all humans have to figure this out. Because girls can be mean and rude just as often as boys can. It’s just that boys don’t find themselves caught in domestic violence situations as often as girls do.

If “just ignoring them” (my mother’s suggestion) worked, we wouldn’t have so many bullies today.

If you’re ever hit, screamed at repeatedly or torn down (even quietly) verbally, the situation has gone beyond “teasing” and this is never love.

Once on Oprah’s Life Class, I heard someone suggest relying on your instincts; but not everyone has a great instincts.

And then some people have difficulty expressing love. I was one of those people. My family was not verbally affectionate. We weren’t huggers. And I can tell you it’s amazing the wonders in-laws can do in a family dynamic, marriages that bring in people for whom saying “I love you” is a matter of course. Sometimes people just need exposure and practice in how to behave more effectively.

I think you just need to be wary of people who have had a bad childhood experience and are looking to take it out on others. Maybe you are the type of person who reminds them of someone who once hurt them. That’s not good.

But back to our little pest here. What is the best way to handle a young boy or girl when they are working off a bad strategy to get attention? We’ve all been there, down the road of a bad strategy. Like anyone using the Scientific Method, this kid had a theory and he tested it out and  did not get the anticipated result. Maybe his favorite Aunt should sit him down and tell him it’s time for him to come up with a new tactic.

 

CLEAN-CUT

Dear Sonny, I’m a guy who gets called “square” by all my long-haired buddies because I wear my hair short! I had long hair before and I really didn’t like the way I looked. I know long hair is “in” now, but I just don’t like the way it looked on me! Should I give in? Bugged, Scranton, Pa.

Sonny’s Response:

Dear Bugged, If you feel better with your hair cut short, wear it that way. Exercise your right as an individual to dress the way you feel best. Fashion is a very temporary thing. What is “in” today is “out” tomorrow. There are lots of people who follow the “latest fads” because they have no real direction of their own. Listen to yourself—you just might be a trend-setter!

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Well, Bugged was not a trend-setter as it turns out. Long hair was here to stay. But as Sonny stated later in 1971, “it aint long hair; it aint short hair.” Everybody do your thing.

This is a good opportunity to play my favorite Sonny & Cher song, “Somebody.”

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SHUT-IN

Dear Sonny, I’m 15 and I got in trouble at school. I “cut” a few classes and my parents found out. My problem is that they won’t let me do anything anymore. I have to report home after school and stay in on weekends. How can I make my folks see that I have learned my lesson? Locked-Up, Yuma, Ariz.

Sonny’s Response:

Dear Locked-Up, Have you tried telling them? It’s a funny thing, but almost everyone can recognize the truth. I f you really have “learned your lesson,” your parents should see that there is no reason for your punishment to continue. If they don’t try to see that your present situation is only temporary [then] use it to your advantage. Read, start a new project, find something you are interested in—but don’t waste your time feeling sorry for yourself! 

Cher Scholar’s Response:

When I was a senior I talked two of my friends, Nellie and Craig, into going to McDonalds for lunch. This was not allowed. We were not supposed to leave campus during the day but Donna and I had been cutting study hall for a while as it was our last class and nobody had ever stopped us. Well, this time we were intercepted by security coming back.

Why did we come back? Because we were nerdy kids who didn’t cut actual classes.

As the security guy came over to us, my friends started to panic and I implored them to essentially lawyer-up. That did not happen. One of them was willing to turn bad, like I was, but the other one broke immediately into tears and confessions. But we got off without even a warning. That’s how bad we were at being bad.

Later that year I threw myself a birthday and graduation party at the Clarion hotel in downtown St. Louis. It took some subterfuge and adult role-playing to arrange it and I’m still amazed we pulled it off, quite frankly. I got into a lot of trouble at home myself, but not as much grief as my friend Rand got for coming. His mother grounded him for a year. A year. He said he didn’t regret it but I still feel guilty about that.

I, however, was ungroundable. My mother often mentioned that when you put televisions into your kid’s bedrooms, they become ungroundable. I never understood why she didn’t just take the TVs back out. They were portable after all. But that wouldn’t have made much difference, she said, because I was a reader and was happy enough to read all day and night. And she didn’t want to ground me from books.

Both Sonny and Cher got into trouble in high school. Sonny got suspended, according to Cher’s Sonny & Me documentary, for bringing an African American band to play at his school prom. Cher was in trouble for things like wearing sunglasses to class, according to her mother’s TV special Superstars and Their Moms. Both of them dropped out of high school before graduation and were definitely, in their own ways, ungroundable too.

Read more Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine

 

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 7

July 30, 2024 / / 0 Comments

This is a big two-pager! A quarter of which is taken up by a gigantic pic of Sonny & Cher. I hate this outfit Sonny is wearing, by the way. It’s the black and white, psychedelic, chessboard, optical illusion animation suit pattern. Bleh. I can’t directly look at it without my third-eye twitching. Sonny & Cher wore these matching chessboard suits on the back of their 1967 duet album, in Case You’re In Love, a spread that included some otherwise great photos of Sonny & Cher walking outside in Paris.

We have a lot to get through this week so let’s get started, four questions for Cher and three for Sonny.

 

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!

Dear Cher, I am almost 13 and there is a boy whom I have liked for over a year. He has never paid much attention to me. I have tried all the little tricks and secrets, but none seem to work! I do something “special” once in a while to get his attention. I am popular and have been told I am cute. Can you give me some new and helpful advice? No results, Beirut, Lebanon

[Beirut! Lebanon!! Cher goes international again!]

Cher’s Response:

Dear No Results, Maybe you are trying too hard. Maybe this special guy feels the pressure and is retreating from it—and you. I remember once when I was popular with all the kids but this one guy. I really went out of my way to try to get him—and he knew it. And I didn’t get him. So, I advice you to “cool it.” I think it would be smart to suddenly be indifferent toward him. Maybe that special trick will arouse his interest.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Maybe he’s not into cute. I’m serious. Love is mysterious. If it made any sense, atoms would probably collapse or something. This is actually a good response. I so hope this story will end up in the upcoming Cher memoir but it’s not likely.

I don’t think even the trick of indifference will do any better than the other “special” maneuvers, sorry to say. It comes down to much we can’t control at the end of the day.  This reminds me of a poem I wrote a few years ago about Swann’s Way and love being a mysterious switch that comes on (or it doesn’t) from sometimes subconscious reasons or past life reasons. Hell if we know.

He might be gay. He may not be ready. He may not be into you. Biologists think it might even all come down to a smell.

Even the idea of “cute” is an existential crisis in the making. Who told you you were cute? Your mother? Another boy who likes you? Your girlfriends? The mirror? Aunt Maude? They all have agendas, No Results. You can’t even trust the mirror.

Forget all that. Just do you the best you can. Let the chips fall where they will. Magic will happen. Heartaches will happen. Very strange things will happen.

Cher keeps saying “what belongs to you, comes to you” and I do believe that although if we all sit around waiting for things to come to us, procreation will probably come to a standstill because everybody’s waiting and nobody’s (figuratively or literally) coming. Nothing much comes naturally. Is a bar atmosphere really all that natural? Is filling out an online dating form natural? Some of the mating dances out there in the wild don’t seem all that natural either. Have you see male blowfish art? Is he trying too hard? I really don’t know. The blowfish ladies seem to like it.

I like to think of it as a dance. Sometimes you move foreword, sometimes you move back, sometimes you don’t move at all.

In Sonny and Cher’s case, a forced separation did shock them into realizing what they meant to each other. And technically, that was Cher’s mother’s doing.

Dear Cher, I am 13 and there is this girl (I’ll call her Amy) who simply hates my steady, so she is spreading bad gossip about him and me and is shattering my reputation at school. Neither I nor my steady has ever done a thing to this girl. We have no solution. Can you help us? “Rep,” No City

Cher’s Response:

Dear “Rep,” First off, you ought to be aware of what is really going on by now. The girl digs your boy friend! That is why she is trying to hurt you and to break you two up. Naturally, there are some kids who are going to wonder if her gossip is true, but your real friends won’t give this girl a second listen. Just be polite to her—but in general, ignore her and her bad remarks. Most people are going to realize that it’s all just “sour grapes” on her part. As for your steady, I am sure he is man enough to ignore her, too. If he really loves you, this sort of thing will not deter him at all.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Mean girls. Now we’re getting into some juicy stuff.

This is not a bad response either. I’m going to bring my mother into this here. First of all because she was showing me her high school yearbook last week and when we came to one girl’s photo, (let’s call her June because I don’t know any Junes except TV’s June Cleaver), she mentioned that the girl was “wild.” As I inquired further, I found out the word “wild” could mean anything from slutty to lawless. Which was quite a range. And I don’t want to quantify this girl’s character here but it’s all to say a “reputation” among girls, we can see, can last over 70 years! It’s no small thing.

My mother and I also discussed the terms “easy,” “fast” and the 80s insult of being called “slutty.” Words like this are what society uses, however you feel about it, to control the sexual (or even affectionate) behavior of women. You can call him a man-slut (f*%kboy is the most recent term I’ve head the kids use on reels) but this just comes across as funny for obvious reasons. (The funniest term on this list was homme fetal.) Just the idea of a promiscuous man seems culturally strange. Lothario is not quite the successful insult.

I’ve had plenty of drama with means girls myself (in my own house, sometimes) but not for Rep’s reasons. Remember I was so behind in matters of love,  I couldn’t be the target of salacious sex rumors (unfortunately). But I did plenty of other transgressive things to ruffle the mean-girl feathers. Due to copious amounts of pride, (probably cultivated from early pre-school mean girl experiences), I was steadfast in being who I was in a world-scape determined to make you conform to popular-girl norms. I followed the path(s) of what I genuinely liked. And suffered the consequences….and to this day still do.

The music I chose to listen to, the clothes I chose to wear, the ideas I had. the things I said.

I found safety in a group of boys and girls who were outsiders as well. And no, not those cool outsiders. The geeky outsiders because sometimes who you really are is not all that hip.

I also posed this problem to my parents while I’m here in Cleveland. We talked about the way teen girls and boys handle conflicts differently. My Dad commented how difficult these social problems are. I wondered wouldn’t it just lead to a fist fight between boys? No trash talk. Girls tend to go all devious and political on each other socially. In my experience millennials and younger girls tend to be better and my best female bosses have been younger than me. Also, I have some amazing girlfriends in my life (of all ages). But overall, statistically speaking, I find my relationships with women much more complicated and hazardous.

This year’s big meme is relevant here, the one where women were asked if they found themselves lost in a forest, would they rather encounter a man they didn’t know or a bear. Most women polled picked the bear and men took great offense at this, like men were bad and bears were good. But I can completely see the computations running in a woman’s head considering this question. She’s running the odds.

The odds are good a bear won’t attack unless the bear is hormonal or starving or fretting as a bear-parent. On the other hand, the chance of a sexual assault by a man is concerningly high out there in the wild. Anywhere from 1 in 5 to 1 in 6. The chance of a bear attack is 1 in 2 million. It’s just a game of odds.

And contemplating mean girls, I find it interesting no one has posed to women the idea of an encounter with a woman they don’t know versus a man they don’t know. Because this changes the equation a bit (for me at least). There’s a chance the woman might become my bestie. Totally! That would be great, surviving in the woods with a fun girl (I’ve already done this twice, once in roller skates). Outdoor slumber parties. I love it! But, if I’m being honest, there’s a greater chance a woman will throw me under the bus. A rapist is terrible, no doubt, but at least he might keep me alive for some nefarious purpose. The woman might probably get rid of me immediately in completion for resources or in competition for the questionable men-folk in the forest.

Actually, my biggest enemy in this situation is going to be myself because who the hell wants to deal with any of this dangerous human bullshit? I might just sacrifice myself to the bear.

Deep breath. Survival is hard. Social survival is harder.

Susan Sarandon got called to the carpet a few years ago for some subliminally mean-girl comments she made about Cher. She said Cher stole her part in The Witches of Eastwick and then claimed Cher said this during filming: Y’know, I really have a hard time being in a scene that’s not about me.” So we just took her lines and she got to go home.”

Immediately, Sarandon tried to qualify it by saying, ‘Y’know, nobody would say that but certainly everybody feels that way. Good for her to say it!” (Bitchiness disguised as compliment.)

Sarandon went on to say she got her beautiful wigs and gowns in the movie from Cher and that Cher was  ‘fantastic,’ ‘generous’ and ‘so funny.’ Cher responded with love for Sarandon and then Susan took to Twitter to clear the air, writing: ‘So much love & respect 4U. Devastated was taken as anything else. Also said how I wish I had balls 2 say same.’ Susan also tweeted: ‘And mentioned how generous you were in giving me ur wig & gown. Anyway, please accept my heartfelt apology.’ Read the blow-by-blow.

The press loves mean-girl drama. Cher famously shaded Madonna one time and made some mean-girl comments about Miley Cyrus (that twerking, tongue-gate performance) after which Cher  apologized and called out her own ego and big mouth. They have since had very positive exchanges, especially about Miley’s “Believe” cover.

It’s a work in progress, this mean-girl stuff. Cher has since worked on trying to be positive when discussing other women in interviews.

 

Dear Cher, I am FAT. That is a fact—and I can’t lose weight as I have no will power. My mom won’t let me wear mod fashions or hair-dos, because she says I don’t look good in them (she’s probably right). Please help me find out how to lose weight. Also, how can I whiten my teeth? Desperate, Thornton, Col.

Cher’s Response:

Dear Desperate, If you have really tried everything, I think there is hope for you in only one direction now. I think your mom should take you to see your family doctor. You should have a check-up and (if it is not harmful for you) you should be given some kind of medication that will help you to control your appetite. When you start to lose a few pounds, by all means get some mod gear—as that will inspire you to stay on your “diet” and give you pride in the fact that you are reducing. To whiten your teeth, brush them gently with common household baking soda once a week. Brush downwards only. Since most of us are born with our teeth a permanent color, it is hard to whiten teeth that are naturally sort of yellowish, but you can try. Best of luck.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Teeth whiteners have come a long way. Diets have not. Many dramatic methods have come and gone, from a plethora of extreme diets to suction to stapling to medical appetite suppressants, most recently injections. The first step in any weight loss journey should be guided by a visit to a nutritionist, as they are the most science-based practitioners in the morass of opinions about weight issues. (See the responses in Part 5).

You can find teeth whiteners everywhere: toothpaste, mouthwash, strips, pens. You could argue, (not to go full-Sneetches here), that teeth are oppressively white these days. Sometimes I miss the natural look of 1970s television shows. Technicolor teeth.

Cher pretty much had pearly whites from the beginning of her professional career. Maybe this is because her mother was a model and actress and had some beauty tricks to pass along.

Dear Cher, My hair is at the length where I can’t do anything with it. It almost touches my shoulders, and it flops when it should flip. It also needs straightening (I have a deadly permanent and when the weather is damp my hear gets absolutely kinky!). Any help would be appreciated. Super-Curly, Vacaville, Calif.

Cher’s Response:

Dear Super-Curly, First of all, you must let your perm grow out before you can do a thing. Sorry about that—but it is a must. When your hair is grown out, if it is still too curly (and if it “reverts” in damp weather), then you will have to have it professionally straightened at a beauty shop. They have harmless, easy straightening methods—it’s like you will the opposite of a permanent. After your hair is straightened you will just have to experiment with a variety of hair styles and ways of setting your hair. Eventually, you are bound to hit upon one that is just right for you.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

We call them salons now. Who can promise beauty anymore? And what did we know back then from harmless? Girls did plenty of harmful things to their hair and definitely still do. We are always just as safe as we know how to be. Last week I talked about a cool girl I once went to concerts with in St. Louis. When she found out I was a Cher fan she told me she spent her teen years literally using a clothes iron on hair while it was spread out on an ironing board. She was trying to straighten her beautiful, natural curls to get “Cher hair.” Aieee! Insane because in the 80s we were all suffering through perms for curly big 80s hair.

The pointless things we do to impress the boys and the mean girls. And ourselves.

Cher has done some crazy stuff to her own hair. The movie studio tried to color it for Mask and it fell out. So she had to cut it all off into a crew cut that she then dyed blonde and then later skunkified.

Cher learned from television that the safest thing for hair versatility was investing in a wig room. Her long-time hairdresser, Renata Leuschner from the Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, designed many, many wigs for all the Cher TV shows and concert tours.

Cher’s wigs even have names. Cher’s friend Paulette documented the Cher wig room and that fun fact turned into an original fan-fiction comic story in Cher Zine 1, “I Know My First Name is Joan: Perils of a Wig-naping” written and drawn by Julie Wiskirchen.

 

Now we turn to the questions put to Sonny:

Here’s Sonny to carry on with answers to the letters from those of you who chose to present him with your particular problem.

Dear Sonny, I have a very unusual problem. Instead of being too shy, my boy friend is too forward—and not with me, but with other girls! I mean he digs me, but he is always doing things to hurt me. He’s a real playboy [man-slut, homme fetal, gigolo]. He tries to act like is is 20 (he is 15) and flirts with girls who are three and four years older than he is. He hangs out with a couple of rough guys. I only see him in the summer and on long weekends (because he lives in another city). When we are together, he is very nice. But I’m worried about his “double-life.” Concerned, Chicago, Ill.

Sonny’s Response:

Dear Concerned,  You must bear in mind that young men are very [horny, idiotic, maladaptive] impressed by certain outside influences. When he sees these “rough” guys carry on, act tough and flirt—he probably thinks they are hot stuff and then seeks to imitate them. Believe it or not, boys do like to attract attention and this is just one way of doing it. However, since he is very nice and straight with you [Is he though?], he must feel sure that you look up to him and that he doesn’t have to put on an act for you. So, for the time being, let well enough alone. Let him go through these normal changes without giving him a hard time, and he will love you for that.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

I am going to give this response a big, fat F- Sonny. In fact, this is rich coming from Sonny, the one who perfected the art of cheating all while telling America (via Cher) to just calm down. This is like the love-bead necklace of icky-lines. It’s a chain of manipulations, the whopper being “this is just a phase I’m going through.” What exactly does “well enough alone” mean here except big red flags. If this guy, albeit only 15 years old, cannot refrain from getting distracted from a girl he supposedly “digs” but sees only in the summer and on long weekends, that says it all. I grew up with friends who pined for the girls they didn’t get to see nearly enough. The last thing they would have wanted to do would be to blow it with her the few days they actually had.

Blow up the life raft, girl. Strap on the parachute. Time to jump ship on this turkey. Unless you’re into open relationships and then good for you. You do you. But girls I know in open relationships never ever use words like “concerned” unless they are worried about getting knocked-up or developing STDs.

Unfortunately, this red flag for Cher was Sonny himself, the responder! And his ideas are illuminating considering that. Let’s not get further into their private life than we have to. Sonny admitted in his own book he wasn’t faithful to Cher. (There’s even a song he recorded in 1973 about it.) So I don’t think that’s a news flash now. Sonny made Cher very blue at times. When the last straw came, she consoled herself, allegedly, in the arms of a guitar player and then future-Toto keyboardist David Paich (who’s father, Marty, was Sonny & Cher’s band leader; David was also the songwriter / subject of “David’s Song“) and then David Geffen who guided Cher through an aggressive de-coupling from Sonny. As far as we know, none of those men flirted with other women (or men) when they were with Cher. Which is how it should be for Cher and Concerned herself.

Dear Sonny, I am 14 and for the first time in my life I hate school. I don’t like any of my studies, and I always had an interest in some of them before. I can’t finish my homework. I am perfectly satisfied to lie on my bed and listen to music or watch TV. I also day-dream a lot. Please tell me what is wrong with me. Sometimes I just wish I could die. I feel that I am all alone in this.  Dawn, Newton, Mass.

Sonny’s Response:

Dear Dawn, Don’t worry—you’re not alone! Probably everybody goes through this stage. I did, and Cher tells me she did. It’s perfectly natural. You are at the stage where you want something very different from the life you have, where you have grown weary of your day-to-day existence. It’s is O.K. to give into your “laziness” to a degree—it will take the pressure off you in other areas. But you must not let this world take you over. There are a number of ways to prevent this. First, take a good look at yourself and analyze your qualities. Everybody is good at something and wants something. Decide where your talent is (writing, painting, singing, or maybe something like cooking or sewing). Anyway, set yourself a goal and go after it. You must fight for it. It is hard, but you certainly don’t want to waste your teen years and wake up one day with no education and no skills. Remember: activity breeds activity—so hang in there!

Cher Scholar’s Response:

So first of all, the suicide crisis line. You can get help if you want and need it. Depression happens to a many of us and it comes in many forms. I grew up in a family with a person with depression and Mr. Cher Scholar has been very public with his experiences with same. In many cases, the cause is chemical and manageable with medication. Like any other part of your body,  some things don’t function 100%. Medicine and our understanding of brain activity has come a long way. Others (like me) have more situational experiences with sad. What’s going on in your life?

When you’re a teenager, you have no idea which case is which. There are a ton of situationally depressing things happening to you. You’re not growing up to look like Don Johnson or Cindy Crawford (80s sex symbols for those youngins). You are not turning into a genius like Albert Einstein and you are not going to be the top of your field like a Magic Johnson or a Meryl Streep. That is depressing! Also, the social environment has become suddenly very politically confusing and treacherous.  (See mean-girls above.) And you have no skills to navigate these things. And not only that but you are really not all that great at introspection yet.

Plus, if you are at all intuitive, things extra-suck. You kinda know but also never really know. I remember when I was a Junior seeing ahead into my future love life. This was not a psychic vision. This was just intuitive prediction. I was slow socially and very confused but I knew who I was. I could see the troubles play out. And I felt sure I was not strong enough to live through it.

But I misjudged myself in three ways: 1) I turned out to be a lot stronger than I imagined (without even trying), 2) I never knew how funny those upcoming sad things could also sometimes be and humor is a great mitigating factor on hard times, and 3) I never imagined the good stuff that would be happening simultaneously with the bad stuff. Another great mitigating factor.

I also agree with Sonny here that activity will proliferate into plenty of things to do to keep your mind off of self-obsession. I would say I struggled with sadness until I became involved with an animal charity in college and became familiar with more acute suffering than what I had ever been through. For some people, this works: perspective. For others, this does not work, it just piles on the sad to their existing sad.

Some people also call this gratitude but that word sounds too nebulous to me to be very helpful. I think we can be more specific. There is an ironic side of humor to be found in the darkest places (some call this dark humor but its also yin and yang at work and paradox). It also helps to keep tally of the good stuff. I had a therapist who asked me to make a list of the daily good as well as the daily bad because she said the human brain will focus on the bad as a matter of instinctual survival. The list was practice at keeping the good things in play.

There’s also such a thing as intellectual malaise and I can’t tell if Dawn is maybe feeling this. Being unchallenged in school just when your brain is starting to get thinking about interesting things. Sonny’s advice to explore interests is good here. I would add to this: go out into the intellectual world of book readings, museum visiting and wandering around the library. Start following your own trails.

I get sad myself if there’s nothing ahead to “look forward to” like a project or a trip or a new restaurant to try. And then bouts of “the pointlessness of it all” can attack anyone already in a state of sad.

Cher has admitted to suffering from depression, which she says runs in her family. She talked about it a bit after making the Not Commercial album. It was seen most publicly in the 1990s after the Infomercials and all her success in the movies. I contend success itself can be as depressing as failure. You can struggle with a sudden “what’s left for me to do” syndrome.

Cher was also struggling with a debilitating chronic fatigue at the time. All the things.

She went on to the biggest comeback of her career, “Believe,” a record-breaking concert tour, Kennedy Center Honors and practically Sainthood now. Good stuff was awaiting. And bad stuff too. She still struggles with parenting dramas, the death of husbands and friends, the loss of her mother, financial challenges and lawsuits and probably a thousand headaches we don’t even see.

Nobody promised us a rose garden. This is actually classic Sonny “good” advice (because he was brilliant at turning lemons into lemonade): you must not let this world take you over.

Here is a spread of Cher-sadnesses. Sometimes there are happy tears, like Cher crying with pride when her son Chas danced on Dancing with the Stars or Cher crying from being moved at her Kennedy Center Honors.

Then there is acting crying in movies like Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Silkwood, Mask, Suspect, Moonstruck, Mermaids…and the photo that made the cover of most newspapers the day after Sonny’s funeral. Cher-critics loved accusing Cher of fake-sadness at Sonny’s death, but I contend that her acting-cry is always pretty crying and you can definitely tell the difference.

 

Dear Sonny,  I have been going with a boy for a month and he says that he loves me. I feel that I have to break up with him because I don’t want to go steady. I am too young to go steady (14), and there is a lot of fun I want to have before being tied down. How can I tell him this without hurting him! Scared, New York City

Sonny’s Response:

Dear Scared, There is no way to tell him this news that will not hurt him. the sooner you tell him, the better—for the hurt will be a little less. The longer you stay together, the deeper the hurt will be for him. You have phrased it very well in your letter—so just tell him that little piece of truth. Be kind (not cruel) when you tell him.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Is this the flip side of Concerned above with the playboy boyfriend? I’m sure he was in the same boat. Still so much fun out there to be had.

That aside, I actually have some experience in this no-ready-for-steady thing because I wasn’t ready before the boys were. So although I  was interested in them (eventually), the boys were still already more mature than I was. And I wasn’t able to deal with that kind of attention yet.  I wanted to be able to deal with it. Everyone else was living Peyton Place soap operas and I felt very left out.

There were two situations I can think of where I got myself into a situation that I felt overwhelmed with and had to break it off. Both happened in high school. One boy’s name was Doug and he was my first kiss (after a football night game by the purple bank of lockers) and I thought he was perfect but quickly found myself out of my depth. I said I wanted to stay friends and he did not take it well, never speaking to me again, except a curt “hi” at our 20th reunion.

All the girls flocked to Mark, another early dating attempt, the year he came to our school as the new kid. He was very handsome and wore the latest 80s parachute pants. This was very thrilling to the girls. I don’t know how many girls he went through, if any, before asking me out (I was clueless, really). But he got really intense really fast. He had some much more experience in all the things. In this case, Mark did not stop talking to me but he kept his distance and we were never part of the same social circles so I never saw him very often after that.

The tragedy of these breakups was that I liked these two boys. And if we had stayed close friends and they had waited, I would have caught up to myself and we could have continued. But so few teenagers are willing to do that. It’s too painful. And you can’t really ask anybody to do that. They either can and do or they don’t.

But I have always regretted my inability to communicate the complexity of my feelings for them (and myself) at that time. Avoidance was all I knew how to do. After all, I didn’t agree to go on a date with them because I didn’t find them handsome and amazing. I didn’t get suddenly disappointed. I was terrified and I had no language to navigate through what we were feeling.

So a lot of pain and drama resulted from misunderstandings and immaturity. It happens every day a million times in high schools all over the world.

Interestingly, Cher usually stays friends with her exes, which has been one of the best things I’ve ever learned from Cher. If you love somebody (if you really do), you can’t just break up with them and stop feeling love. And if you can, did you really love them in the first place? They’re the same person after all. You can distance yourself from toxic people, definitely. And you ex doesn’t (and maybe shouldn’t) turn into your bestie. But usually all the hurt lies in pretending you don’t love someone you really do.

Just keep your feelings straight and keep an open dialogue and that has never served me wrong ever and I wish I had done that with Doug and Mark.

Cher with some of her exes:

 

Read more Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine

Cher Space and Time

June 15, 2024 / / 0 Comments

While I was working nightshift last week, to stay awake I made a list of scenes, movements and styles Cher has been involved with over the decades. This is kind of a piggy-back to the music legitimacy article I did last week and thinking about prior categories I might have missed. But also thinking beyond music. Here it is:

– Part of the mid-1960s Southern California Pop scene with the Mamas and the Papas, the Byrds, the Beach Boys, the Turtles and the Association

– A member of Phil Spector’s Gold Star Studios circle

– Records made with The Wrecking Crew

– One of the first records made at Muscle Shoals Recording Studio

– A top participant in the Golden Age of Variety Television

– Worked with comedy-television icon, producer George Schlatter and his slate of shows

– First Met Gala fashion Icon

– A Vogue cover girl in the Richard Avedon era

– The Crown Jewel of Bob Mackie

– A hot ticket in Old Las Vegas in the late 1970s (the Sinatra/Barely-Post-Elvis Vegas)

–  Part of the Studio 54 scene

– A late-allowed MTV participant but made MTV history with a pretty tame video that was banned from daytime MTV (while in her 40s!)

– Acted under the iconic auteur directors of the 1960s and 1970s: Robert Altman, Mike Nichols, Peter Bogdanovich, Peter Yates, Norman Jewison and Franco Zeffirelli

– Infomercial Queen
Can I just say I still love the infomercials and I may be the only one. In a recent bio-drama, I heard the statement made that Cher had fought so hard for acting respectability and then blew it with these. But did she fight so hard for respectability?  I thought that was what the whole thumbing her nose at the Academy with the 1986 dress was about. Why wouldn’t she thumb her nose at them again with infomercials? Unless you only thumb your nose as an outsider? I am totally fine with Cher going off-script with these postmodern delights.

– Auto-tune ground zero (while in her 50s!)

– Spearheading the big circus live show before subsequent fierce divas followed suit (while in her 50s and 60s!)

–  Newly sainted and recurring Icon Award recipient (while in her 70s!)

 

In the bio-drama mentioned above Josiah Howard can be seen talking about how long Cher has been famous and how she has become part of everybody’s cultural memory because, “we remember it all.” She has become time itself.

Cher Scholar Catches Up

April 28, 2024 / / 0 Comments

I’m woefully behind. I feel like I’ve been through something in the past few months.

Here’s what we’ve missed in Cherlandia.

Cher TV

I’ve kept working despite a LOT of drama, including but not limited to, losing one of my two dogs and twice, almost losing my mother. As a coping activity, I spent a day or two adding information and links to the Cher TV page in the TV Appearances and Interviews section: https://www.cherscholar.com/tv/. I’m not finished. I keep finding more. So far we’re up to 332 TV appearances but I’m not trying to list every Entertainment Tonight appearance or local interview. Just indicative ones.

Cher Documentary

I came across a recent YouTube documentary, Cher, In Her Own Words. I think artist documentaries are sometimes great for fans but sometimes not great for the kind of fan who finds a lot of errors or don’t understand why certain things are covered and not other things. Or how they don’t get anywhere near the core of the person.

I’ve never seen a Cher documentary I’ve liked. Ever. And this is no exception. I’ve actually lost my notes about it in the mayhem that was my spring. But it has a cheesy voice over and all the same images in the wrong decade buckets. It’s filled with inane, unrelated footage to fill in the space.

But it was interesting in that it had footage from recent interviews where Cher did seem to focus more on her ideas about her own career. And there was new footage of stuff, like behind-the-scenes filming of Good Times I had never seen. I also noticed that some of the same interview footage was used for the Cher reel at the I Heart Music Awards in April. Here’s the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvBojJMeXdo

Deaths of Peripherals

The director of Moonstruck, Norman Jewison, died in January. She tweeted a nice message about it. I read in April that actor Ryan O’Neal also passed in December and I wondered how I missed it, maybe in all the Christmas album bruhaha. I was never a fan of Ryan O’Neal but he did star in the movie Faithful with Cher, probably a fan and critic least-favorite movie. Actually, one of the things I didn’t like most about it was Ryan O’Neal who played an all-too believable schmuck.

Court Cases

Two depressing court cases slogged involving discomforting personal family-drama stuff:

Cher’s attempt to prevent Mary Bono from terminating Cher’s Sonny & Cher royalties looks promising as the judge seemed to side with Cher. A friend of mine recently asked me, “doesn’t Cher already have enough money?” to which the logic seemed to be the richest party should always lose, acceptance of which would cause a legal run on the rich people. But in any case, I have to side with Cher on this one. She was already hornswaggled by Sonny for all their earnings. This was his mea culpa or at least a legal agreement to avoid spousal support. Mary Bono has two of Sonny’s children to think about but there are two other children of Sonny’s out there as well. Mary Bono also had her own congressional career and was not left high and dry when Sonny died.

And Cher’s bid for conservatorship over her son, Elijah Allman, continues (along with its unfortunate timing after the emancipation of Britney Spears). It seems Allman has reunited with his wife in the meantime and he appears to be back on the wagon. I do believe Cher is working out of motherly concern and not out of greed. It’s a tricky situation because Elijah is an adult. I’m not a mother so I’m not going to do any further speculating.

Dinner at Cher’s House

For months, Cher was promoting a charity event (which took place this weekend) in support of Free the Wild. Both the top bidder and a selected-fan would win a dinner party at Cher’s Malibu manse. I would love to hear more about the dinner. What food was served? Did the promised witty conversation occur? I wasn’t in any position to attend such a thing myself but I did want to donate to the good cause. If you are so inclined, you can too: https://www.freethewild.org/.

Cher Feting

Cher had a spring of accolades. She won the Equal Justice Icon Award on 29 March. She was given the Icon award at the I Heart Music Awards on 1 April with Meryl Streep doing the introduction and dueting with Jennifer Hudson. Cher’s speech was a bit of a ramble but that’s kind of her speech style. I love Meryl Streep but her speech was no great shakes either, especially compared to Beyonce’s great speech that night.

There was a bit of controversy about Hudson out-singing Cher during the duet but I think the bigger story is how much support from the black community Cher is receiving right now. It was evident in the night’s show and Hudson’s comments at the end of the duet. Cher will also be part of the Amfar Gala on 23 May.

And so now we proceed to the accolade that many fans have long been waiting for. That Hall of Fame.

Before we get into that I want to say a few things. I’ve been criticized off and on all my life for things I’ve liked. It hasn’t bothered me much. I have no guilty pleasures. We’re all on our own journey, after all. But last night I watched Who Done It, a fan documentary about the movie Clue.

Now I was there to see this movie in the theaters. I can’t remember who’s idea it was to go see it but my friends and I immediately became convinced this was an amazing movie: the level of talent, the perfect but also unusual casting, the tight comedic timing, the comedic range of the script, the creativity, writing, directing, all of it.

But the movie flopped when it opened. It was the Office Space of its decade (another movie I was on board with in theaters). Looking back, the movie was ill-timed amongst the suburban realism and super-gravitas of the 1980s. Compare the movie to Ghostbusters to see what I mean. This unpolished but competent documentary explained how Clue was an homage to not only a thread of camp in Agatha Christie (a writer who was also very uncool in the 1980s), but to the pacing of His Girl Friday (1940). This was a decade where camp was pretty much on the downlow from the mainstream (outside of John Waters movies). The 80s took themselves very seriously. Plus the movie had no megastar, the reviews were mixed and there was that confusing idea of multiple endings which were not packaged together in one viewing experience (until cable and home rental). The movie really was a gem under a cheesy pretense.

And many of these things were lost on my high-school self, to be fair. But my friends and I were obsessed with the movie in a way our other classmates were not. It was part of our oddball identity. We memorized the lines and watched it on cable and then as a VHS rental over and over again. We loved Tim Curry, not just for Rocky Horror but for Clue. We idolized him just as much for Clue. His work in the movie musical Annie was similarly overlooked, that being another movie that tanked with critics and moviegoers when it was in theaters but later found respect.

And until yesterday I thought Clue was just another odd-ball misfit that I loved and defended. But no. It has become a bonafide cult hit with younger generations. And as I was watching this documentary I was like yeah, another thing I was onboard with years before it was cool or understood.

I would say I have a taste for the underdog but I really don’t think that’s what it is. I like good things. Things I like are great. I mean not everything they do might be great. (I think we can all agree this is not great. But this is fucking great.)

Last night I felt something that was not quite smugness, but definitely a better assurance about my barometers. I don’t like bad things. I’m usually on to something.

And I have been proselytizing about Cher all my life. Like since I was five in whatever rudimentary way I could. And I’ve also been questioning what is it that gives something value, which includes challenging the status quo because when you start poking around, popularity is usually on shaky ground: is it record, concert and swag sales, is it criticism, is it influence on younger generations, is it breaking records, working with the best people (musicians and directors)?

Or is it a cabal deciding? Because that is the least rational of the things. Which is what bothers me about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the trumped up scarcity (that is really ceaseless marketing) and its cabal of judges.

The RnR HoF takes itself very seriously. Which is why Spinal Tap is so great. It’s also why Clue is so great. And that very seriousness undercuts its own blind-spot valuations by over-valuating personal taste.

And yet, I also can’t pretend Cher’s 2024 induction is not significant in any way. The fans are very happy. This is a good thing. They have wanted this for a long time. She did very well in the pre-selection fan voting (as the top woman, if that’s the bar we must watch).

Cher was included in the final roster for induction in October in Cleveland, Ohio. I have been making the case for Cher’s credibility for so long, it does feel like a small vindication. Her rise to respect has been slow and ongoing. I track its origins to the 1990s when VH1 started airing old Cher show episodes on Tuesday nights and also when her Behind the Music episode ran for an hour and a half instead of the typically alloted hour.

Slowly since then a new generation of cultural critics and performers like Pink! and Perry Ferrell of Jane’s Addiction have been making the case as well. In the last five to ten years she’s been almost revered with an iconic status. This was not the reality for fans in the 1970s when she was a fashion joke akin to Paris Hilton. Or in the 1980s when she was given acting credibility but still withheld from any kind of music credibility, although her music output far outweighs her acting output.

Allegedly Cher wanted to be inducted as Sonny & Cher, which is another amazing facet of this story, how loyal Cher is to Sonny at the end of the day and after all these years and how she clearly and repeatedly states that her entire music career was Sonny’s dream. Which is why Cher’s induction is Sonny’s accolade as much as it is Cher’s. Sonny is vindicated here as much if not more than all the fans are. And Sonny deserves a great amount of credit. Cher was his discovery and his insistence. He is a crucial piece of Cher as she stands today.

But we also have to realize that it is Cher who has broken the big records. Her solo records, her longevity, her continued stance of rebellion, her own Cherness. So it seems fully logical that she would be the inductee. Sonny was like the rocket launcher. An impossibly strong and brilliant one. As Cher states in the aforementioned documentary, there was nothing about Cher early on that screamed movie star or rock star. But Sonny saw it.

I still feel the same way about the HofF, even now that Cher is “in.” But I do acknowledge the acknowledgement. The complaint that “Cher is not rock” can still be heard out there in the complainosphere? To which I would say exactly, she is much bigger. Rock and roll is nothing but all those many things that prop it up: blues, gospel, folk, punk, torch, country, showtunes, jazz, dance, rap, metal, the infinitely-alternative everything, the hairdos, clothes and mythology…it’s a posture more than a quantifiable genre.

Cher has recorded in many of those styles and her influence is proliferating as we speak. She is an entertainment Wonder Woman. An ongoing vaudevillian Viking.

Yes, I have been making the case for Cher, like I said, since I was in the single digits and I’m gonna keep doing it. Because I know I’m on to something. The HoF feels like a hard-won concession at this point.

But the things I like are much bigger than that.

 

Read More!

How Pink! exists as a singer because of Cher

How Perry Ferrell of Jane’s Addiction encouraged votes for Cher in the RnR HoF

Cher Went Public Again With a Boyfriend

July 10, 2023 / / 2 Comments

So Alexander Edwards. This also happened while I was away. This relationship was short (about 6 months by online estimates) and it ended with a whimper and was very controversial. So it’s interesting from a lot of perspectives. People were so fascinated, even People Magazine did a story that was basically “Who is this guy?”

Cher’s been on the down low with her love life for the past few decades and, as if we didn’t know why, we must know now. It was every bit as paparazzi-crazy as you’d expect. And everyone had to have an opinion about it. Some fans expressed  they were “worried about her” which seemed a bit whistle-y and unnecessary. This is Cher were talking about. Some people expressed concern about his age and/or previous dating history.

You can unpack this all many ways. And race had to be a trigger for a few of Cher’s fans. Although mostly left-leaning, Cher fans aren’t all left-leaning. And besides, I know a few very racist leftists. So…

But Sonny & Cher always had black friends and colleagues and invited many black acts to their shows long before other variety shows, if they ever did. Sonny was very enmeshed in  soul and gospel music, more so than the Phil Spector sound he got distracted with for a bit. But I can unfortunately see some fans having an issue with Cher dating a black person. Even if they didn’t want to admit it (to themselves). Race for me was a non-issue. I have more struggles as the age gap keeps widening. I would love to see Cher with Danny Glover, for example (born the same year!). I don’t even know anything about Danny Glover. He might be a total creep but they look good together in my head.

So the age thing. When Cher was younger there was already bruhaha around her dating younger men, starting with Gregg Allman. As she gets older, it just prompts handwringing about opportunism, like for the late-in-life marriages of Liza Minelli or Martha Rae. But Cher, we must remind ourselves, is not Liza Minelli or Martha Rae.

Dating younger people is one thing. My father is younger than my mother. And yes, we tease him about this, especially because he was underage when they married. And there have been plenty of solid relationships between people with big age spans. There’s the famous Bogart & Bacall span. I guess the issue for me is we should probably keep things on a level playing field. For men and women and everyone. Whenever women do something (like serially dating very young people) and they deflect criticism by saying well hey…men are doing it….I think, but what does that mean? Should Leonardo DiCaprio be doing it? I’m not saying yes or no. I’m just saying the whole topic of Cher dating younger men tends to give me cognitive dissonance.

Which I realize is more about me. Once of the things I find fascinating about my Cher fandom is how little I imagine I would actually have in common with Cher personally. We’re different people and I’m totally okay with that. One perfect example of this is Cher’s taste in men, few of whom I find even remotely handsome.

During the Edwardian Era (this is what I’m now calling it), I had many conversations about this with Cher friends. And I will defend Cher because we each have our thing. Sexual attraction gets imprinted on us pretty young and you can’t really fix it. First there’s Sonny, who I didn’t think was attractive at all in the 60s as Prince Valliant but I could kind of see something there in the 70s with the mustache and his rocking kind of Sergio-Leone-villain look.

Then there was David Geffen (who I don’t even think Cher found handsome), Gregg Allman (whose sideburns always reminded me of a Chia Pet), Gene Simmons (that handy hanky), Tom Cruise (a real plain Jane), Val Kilmer (yeah, ok), Josh Donen (passable) , Robert Camilletti (probably the most handsome but it felt boring at the time), Richie Sambora (no), Ron Zimmerman (I can never even remember what he looks like), and Alexander Edwards (eh).

Contrast this bunch with Cher’s very handsome leading men and you’ve got a real stack: Sam Elliot and Stanley Tucci are two particularly handsome men. Nicolas Cage (in a pinch),  I don’t agree with much about Kurt Russell but he was pretty sexy in Silkwood.

But you know what? It’s not about me. In a big sense. Like the biggest sense. In no way is this about us fans. Cher isn’t a movie character. Sure, it is fun to travel through the list of lovers with a few cents here and there (I just had a pretty good time up there). But as long as Cher is happy (even for sexy, 6-month stretches) and the man treats her with the respect (and reverence) she deserves…we need to stay out of it. Just go back to Sonny and Cher when they first met if you need any reminding of the zero fucks Cher gave about what her people said about him.

I think she’s got this.

But just incidentally Danny Glover is single again.

Cher in Andy Warhol’s Interview, December 1974

June 3, 2022 / / 2 Comments

Andy-warhols-interview-dec-1974-cher_1_f54fed1784e359afb0fed32ac6e82225

I'm not proud of it, but when I saw this come up on eBay a few weeks ago, after waiting decades for the issue to show up, I literally threw money at it with the dangerous Make an Offer feature. 

And after reading it I wasn't very sorry I did. I think this is an important interview for 1974, albeit annoyingly gossipy to the point of catty and status obsessed, as Andy Warhol's Interview could often be. (Andy and Bob interviewed her once again for the March 1982 issue)

Bobandy
In 1974, Cher, David Geffen (who Cher was dating at the time), Andy Warhol, Bob Colacello and Andrea Portago all met at the Hotel Pierre and they all mostly talk about shopping.

Every column or so of text had a list of shorthand topics that were discussed but not transcribed. An example:

"Liza Minelli
the wedding
Jack Haley
coming to town this weekend
Halston's giving a party"

Another especially egregious example is this one:

"serious economic situation
very depressing
stuff by the yard
1940s jewelry
so cheap now
vulgar, but big
Cartier's in Paris
the best
pull out their old stuff. Ask them.
Erte's book
designers today
any master craftsmen?"

Interview2However, there are some unique conversational events in this interview.

  1. Defending Sonny:

    (a) Cher has just found out earlier in the year that Sonny had slyly screwed her out of all her earnings over the previous decade. She has just discovered she was a paid employee in a company Sonny and his lawyer created called Cher Enterprises and Cher was entitled to none of the profits but three weeks of paid vacation (so that's something…but which she never received, telling the Warhol gang the act Sonny & Cher never took a vacation in all of the last 12 years). Sonny's contract also stipulated Cher could not work on any solo projects without his permission. So Cher had been out of work for most of 1974 while David Geffen used his formidable gray cells to liberate Cher from Sonny's contractual clutches. Geffen as Cher's knight-in-shining-armor was not appreciated by Sonny, who despised David Geffen for years afterwards with the heat of a thousand suns.

    Despite this drama, Cher refuses to trash talk Sonny in this interview. "I knew that we owned half of the show and I thought that Cher Enterprises was just a company you had to have because people are always forming companies–I really didn't even know why, you know. I just thought because we had a payroll, and the checks said Cher Enterprises…Now I get nothing….the judge gave me a certain amount of money each month to live on until I can have half of whatever it is…" (this never happened by the way; Cher ended up having to buy out her contract from Sonny which took her until 1977). When Andrea talks about how greedy that was of Sonny, Cher's response is "Well, it's a strange thing….Sonny was really angry. He said, 'You screwed up everything. I could have made all this money and…it's your fault so I should be the one who keeps the money and you should go out and work." I said, "That seems logical, but when I met you, you were a truck driver and I was doing nothing and we were nothing and now we have all this money and all these things, and you should take half and I should take half…"

    The next question is Andy Warhol asking Cher if she does her own nails.

    (b) Custody of Chastity: Sonny also fought Cher for full custody of Chastity "and then the judge ended up giving him less time to see her than I had always given him so he said, 'Well, I hope you're not going to stick to that' and I said, "No, you can see her whenever you feel like seeing her.' My goal in life is not to keep her from him."

    (c) Sonny's flopped variety TV show: Andrea asks Cher if she saw Sonny's 1974 show, The Sonny Comedy Review. Cher says, "Yeah, I did." "Did you like it?" Andrea asks. For the record, this show was handed it's ass in  1974 but Cher says, "Well, there were a lot of things about it that I liked. You know?" Andrea says, "I thought you were sorely missing and Chastity, too." Cher says "Well, a lot of people think that, but I think that if you looked at the show and you didn't remember the Sonny and Cher show, that it was a pretty good show." Andrea retorts, "But it was the same format. How could you not remember it?" And Cher says, "It was, that's true. Well, that's the producer's fault because they just kind of do the same thing over and over again and they've done it like five times but the only time that it actually ever worked was with us but I don't think they know how to do anything else."

    So kids…this was the apex of Sonny's assholery toward Cher (going for her share of a fortune and full custody of their child). So when in 1998 people ragged on Cher at Sonny's death for jumping on a grieving-widow-wagon because she had spent decades trashing him, this was just more of the same anti-Cher bullshit made up over nothing true. For all Cher's softball insults about Sonny over the years ("I traded one ugly man for another"), she defended him just as often and always came to his aid when summoned, like when he opened his LA restaurant and needed publicity, when he was running for mayor of Palm Springs and needed publicity which precipitated the David Letterman Show reunion. This interview is the sterling example of how hard, if not impossible, it really was to turn Cher against Sonny. Not even Sonny could do it.

    Sonny & Cher outside of the Santa Monica Courthouse in 1974 where Sonny slipped Cher some tongue for the paparazzi:

    Courthouse1 Courthouse1 Courthouse1

  2. Being a Slave to Fashion, Andy Warhol vs. Cher:

    They're discussing people who wear whatever they see in Vogue Magazine. Cher defends people who need help figuring out complete looks with magazines. Andy Warhol then says, "And the fashion editors spend millions finding the right things, and they are right about what looks good; whatever they show is really right-looking, and they do work hard at it so people might as well take advantage of it."[Andy Warhol: Fashion Apologist!] Cher then says, "there will always be people who won't follow this. Sometimes I buy a 3-piece suit but then I just wear the pants because it makes me feel strange to go out in something that's pre-set already for me. I kind of like to screw around with it…I think there's really no such thing as what's 'right' in fashion now and I think that's good."

    Another thing Cher gets no credit for: her risk taking 'looks' that say fuck-you to fashion more often than catering to it. Some 1974 Cher looks:

    19743 19743 19743

  3. Laverne vs. Ernestine:

    This is short but interesting, Cher's conception of her character. When Andrea says Cher's Laverne character "is a little bit reminiscent of Lily Tomlin's telephone operator," Ernestine. Cher says, "I guess they were both strange kind of ladies, but then Ernestine was so square and Laverne was so broad…she played around a lot."

    Laverne and Ernestine never met in TVLand like Laverne and Geraldine did.

    Laverne-geraldineThere's still time.

  4. Meeting famous people:

    It's always interesting to hear famous people talk about meeting other people they consider more famous than themselves. David Geffen says, "your fantasies are bound to be destroyed upon meeting almost anybody. I'm sure if we met Clark Gable we'd be very disappointed" and Cher says, "Yeah, because we all have an idea of what we think of Clark Gable, right? and we'd make him fit the mold of filling our insecurities, our neuroses or what we need of him as our star…" and then Andy Warhol says they just met Joan Crawford and she was great, "fit the bill" he says. Cher doesn't seem to buy it and tries to quote something about legends and men and David Geffen remembers the quote more accurately, "When the Legend is bigger than the Man, then print the Legend."

    Cher's celebrity obsession was Audrey Hepburn, by the way, and I don't think she was disappointed. Speaking of which, this picture I just found on Pinterest is captioned, "Audrey with Cher Hair."

    Audrey

  5. The Famous and the Famous:

    Cher's recent Aspen trip proving celebrities sometimes really do hang out together: Cher is talking about having dinner plans that night with Ara Gallant and how Cher had just been to Aspen with Ara and "Angelica, Brit Ekland, Apollonia, Ingrid, myself….And David, Lou, and Jack. We had the most wonderful time. We had a ball. I mean we just blew it out. Skied all day and danced al night."

    As you would expect. Then Bob tries to talk Cher into going shopping that Saturday for 1940s jewelry. (We gotta get in on this hanging out with Cher thing.)

    Aspen

  6. Cher in Movies: 

    Andy Warhol tells her her movie was "so great. It was really good comedy." And Cher says, "What? Good Times?" She then acknowledges both Good Times and Chastity as being "much longer ago…let's see, I was 20, so that's eight years ago." (Ages!)

    Gt

Andy, Bob and Andrea leave the Pierre and talk about how good Cher looked without makeup and how "she'd be fun to shop with–she loves all the jewelry." 

Typical Cher Tabloid from November 1975

October 23, 2020 / / 0 Comments

20200829_125805For my birthday, my friend Julie sent me this tabloid magazine TV Radio Mirror from November 1975. It's a good sample of tabloid coverage of Cher in 1975…

…with the exception that this one has a crazy cover of text, so tickled were these editors with their story they used actual newspeak verbiage instead of pictures. The gravitas of the gesture!

"The Taming of Cher: One woman has reportedly committed suicide over him. And now Cher, the cream of the female crop, is desperately running in circles trying to please him. Who is Gregg Allman and what is this strange, compelling power he has over women? Does he use drugs to cast his spell, or is his mere sexual intensity enough to (continued on p.40)."

That’s the cover! And make sure not to miss “Tony Orlando’s Childhood Memories: I rubbed elbows with pimps, junkies & murderers!"

Or "Rock Hudson Uncensored" (I'm pretty sure this 1975 story was completely censored.)

Wow. Just Wow. But it doesn't stop there!

This issue is interesting in a few ways. One, it gives more detail about the Jenny Arness tragedy because it had just happened. So this article includes a bit more about how her family was doing (not good). For those who don't know, this was a very sad story about how Gregg Allman’s prior girlfriend committed suicide.

Secondly, it's interesting how the writer, Amanda Murrah Matetsky, treats the idea of female self-agency and being in love (there is none). The article details the tumultuous first months of Cher’s relationship to Gregg Allman and then dives into speculation.

20201020_105044 (1)To be sure, Gregg Allman was so different than Sonny, everyone in America (including fans) were having a whip-lash moment. So the struggle to understand is maybe understandable but the dated-sexism is still pretty shocking. She says,

“He must have some kind of power over her and his mere presence in her life to muddle her head so effectively.”

Then she speculates about their possible drug use (to explain it all) and Cher's having just saved the life of Alan Gorrie of the Average White Band at a Los Angeles party on September 23, 1974. Read more about that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_White_Band

But then the writer changes her mind to say,

“But Cher is probably too smart to succumb to any of the lures of the drug motivated (or unmotivated) culture….it is far more likely that our heroin’s head has been turned around by love—or sex (or both!!). It is most always through sex that a man gains his initial power over a woman….How long can Allman’s power last. For the present, Gregg has tamed Cher—just as one of Shakespeare's immortal characters tamed the proverbial shew. But there are those who feel that it’s just a matter of time before Cher slips through Allman’s musically talented fingers…When asked if he’s planning to marry his new girlfriend, Suzi Cuelho, Sonny Bono answers, 'We’ll see how it goes. I think I’ll let Cher get married a few more times first!'"

Invoking Shakespeare and Sonny Bono in the same piece. Who would have thought? The article then goes into speculating that this is a rebound relationship or fueled by Cher's mother’s many divorces and the kinds of statements Georgia was giving to the press at the time about marriage ending loving relationships…comments which our author is very critical of:

“Since this is the kind of motherly advice Cher receives, we shouldn’t be surprised if she has filed for another divorce by the time you read this.” [She didn’t.]

20201020_105117The article talks about the $24-million dollar lawsuit Sonny has pending against Cher and David Geffen. And yet Sonny tells the press,

    “I talk to her all the time. We’re closer than anyone will suspect.”

The article then discusses how Cher missed the first week of taping her new season’s show due to being in Buffalo “patch[ing] up her marriage.” [Allegedly, Allman was really in rehab in Buffalo at that time and Cher was lending support.]

The article ends by directly hinting to Cher that she needs to focus on her TV show more and avoid the pitfalls of Jenny Arness. Yikes!

Overall, an icky, manipulative little piece.

Cher in Vogue, December 1965

June 25, 2020 / / 0 Comments

20200623_083725Just six months after their first hit in July of 1965, Sonny & Cher are already appearing in Vogue magazine in a column called "People are talking about…"

Who else were people talking about that issue? Sarah Badel, a stage and film actress, and Theodore C. Sorensen, a presidential adviser and speechwriter for John F. Kennedy. The section on Sonny & Cher is headed in bold. Cher's name is fully accented all through the blurb. 

“Sonny & Chér Star Folk-Rockers

Look at them, Sonny and Chér. Everybody is. Love singers from California, they are married, positive-protest thinkers whose LPs and singles, I Got You Babe, Look At Us, But You’re Mine,  sell in the millions, have pitched them around the top of the disc charts. “I can only play seven chords,” says Sonny Bono, twenty-four [!], who plinks out most of the hymns to marital bliss they sing on marathon one-night stands, on television, in Europe, and in a movie they will make. Disarmingly baffled by their spiraling success, he said, “Everything’s out of sight, man.” Now the darlings of the transatlantic folk-rock kingdom, these two have countless hoarders of their records [how much could you hoar back then?], copiers of their clothes, Sonny’s lionhart haircut, his knee-length buckskin boots, his possum and bobcat jackets. Chér’s waterfall of dense black hair, her pale deep-eyed radiance, her hundred pairs of below-navel belled pants. (Nineteen-year-old Chér doesn’t own a dress). In the folk-rock idiom, Sonny & Chér pound out Love. Around Sonny’s hammering twang to let-us-be-what-we-wanna-be lyrics, Chér’s pours a plaintive low loop of sound.”

Interesting to note these two are "positive" protest thinkers, not pesky negative ones. Sonny was already 30 in 1965. With all the hippie-suspicions of older people, I guess you can see why he would lie about his age. I guess nobody did fact-checking in those days. As because this is Vogue, much is made over their kooky clothes. And this must be what makes the cher-stare so powerful: "her deep-eyed radiance." 

The picture is very telling too. Sonny stares straight at he camera, slightly ambitious looking. Cher is carefree, innocent and looking at Sonny.

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