Category: Peripherals (Page 1 of 21)

So Much Stuff!

November 5, 2024 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

It’s election day. It feels very anxious out there. I’m appreciating any distractions the day has to offer.

And in the Cher-sphere, there is so much to catch up on.

I’m very behind because I just returned from a vacation to Cleveland (a fun one this time), Tucson Arizona, Joshua Tree California and then back through Phoenix. And during that time Cher has been very, very busy.

We’ll need to review it quickly before the Cher book comes out in 14 days.

First, since it’s November we can start listening to the Christmas album again. Some people choose to wait until the day after Thanksgiving for Christmas music, but if you are in desperate need of some pre-holiday cheer, I think it’s okay to indulge early.

There is some memoir news (variations on formats to discuss). We need to recap the week of October 19 with the Victoria’s Secret runway performance, Cher’s Spotify playlist, (which is already down but I captured the songs on a list because I’m a Cher nerd and there’s a lot to discuss around that). We also have the Hall of Fame induction. I was able to attend and see the exhibit at the museum. I’ll review all that along with the Insights video and this year’s program chapter on Cher.

I also want to talk soon about the Cher singles that have appeared throughout the years in Rolling Stone Magazine‘s “best singles” lists. I had to deep dive into my Cher She-Shed to pull out one of the old 1988 lists. Cher songs on those have come and gone and we’ll consider why that is. There’s a podcast out there about “Believe’s” appearance on the latest list.

I also want to start some song spotlights beginning with “Love and Pain” from the Take Me Home album.

While I was digging through my Cher shed, I found some 1970s magazine memorabilia with Cher beauty tips. Since this was a recurring theme in the Ask Sonny & Cher in16 Magazine articles, we’ll look at those.

And then we need to talk about Teri Garr, who has just sadly passed. And the Kamala Harris endorsement video…

In the meantime, Silkwood has just become available on Streaming for the first time with Hulu. It has one of Cher’s best performances under the direction of Mike Nichols and the tutelage of Meryl Streep. If you’re feeling election stress, transfer it for an hour and a half into a movie about sinister corporate malfeasance.

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 14

October 14, 2024 / Cher Scholar / 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.

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 13

October 11, 2024 / Cher Scholar / 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!

Little Bites

October 8, 2024 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

Little Bites (2024) - IMDb Speaking of Little Bites, here is a post to catch up on bits and bites of the Cher news we’re behind on.

Lawsuits

Cher and her son, Elijah Allman, have come to an agreement via mediation and Cher has dropped her conservatorship lawsuit. More info:

Cher won her royalties lawsuit against Mary Bono. More info:

Billboard

Chaz Bono Appearances

Chaz Bono recently spoke in Rochester, New York, at a sobriety event and also discussed his family’s history of addiction and mental health struggles.

Chaz Bono’s new movie Little Bites also premieres this Friday, October 9. Not in my town but the step-and-repeat wall indicates the movie might be coming to streaming on Shudder. I will be able to watch it there.

Watch the Trailer

It looks scary! Reviews have so far been mixed but it has a 70% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The premiere was held in Los Angeles on October 3. Cher is listed as Executive Producer on the film and attended.

You might recognize this jacket from the late 1980s People Magazine picture in New York City. One of my favorite Cher pictures.

Ted Lasso and Cher

Ted Lasso (TV Series 2020–2023) - IMDb There are few good things I have to say about this shitty, heartbreaking year. But one of them is the time I’ve spent watching an amazing show called Ted Lasso. My family has been prodding me to watch this show for a while now but I didn’t have AppleTV. The show has a strong foundation of kindness and perseverance and goes against the grain of decades of Machiavellian TV plots. We have been so bombarded with fictional and reality characters showing us all the ways we can be assholes, it’s refreshing to see something that shows us all the ways to not be assholes…and still maintain dramatic interest, as if assholery is the only thing that could.

The show is well-written and full of inspiring sayings like “aint nothing to it but to do it.”

Anyway, it’s was a happy thing that Cher makes a few of the show’s references in Season 2, episodes 7 and 9.

Episode 7 opens with the song “I Got You Babe” played in its entirety to show all is not blissful in the relationship between Roy Kent and Keely Jones.

In Episode 9, “Bones & Honey,” we follow the character Beard through an episode-long adventure not unlike the movie Nobody mashed up with Martin Scorsese’s After Hours. Beard proposes taking some Richmond football fans to the ellusive club Bones & Honey to sneak in as nonmembers. One of the characters is doubtful, saying “even Cher couldn’t get in! Do you believe they did that to Cher?” complete with pitch voice.

Later when Beard does get them in, the characters are amazed, saying “You did what Cher couldn’t do!”

It was interesting to get the show’s read on the cultural meaning of Cher as a person who is normally cool enough to get in anywhere. Like the coolest of the cool.

Sammy Hagar

While I was in Boston, my oldest brother Andrew told me about driving from Champaign/Urbana to St. Louis with a bunch of his frat mates to see Sammy Haggar play a 1983 show at the Checkerdome for an MTV special. Recently I had to make an unplanned visit to Cleveland where my other brother Randy admitted he was also at that show.

I watched the concert on a bootleg recently and was struck by all the big stage props in it, the crane rigging Sammy Hagar climbs up and hangs off of like a monkey, the hot rod Hagar jumps on. It’s a fun show.

But these pieces of staging aren’t that different from Cher’s big shoe and lava lamps, just people designing shows for the last row of their arenas. Instead of dancers hanging from cranes, Hagar just did it himself.

He was just designing a more masculine show and so no one ever accused him of putting a car up on stage to detract from his music or due to his lack of talent.

Funny that.

Cher Show on the Road

New dates have been released for the traveling version of the Broadway Cher Show. I will be seeing one of these in 2025.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

It appears Cher will perform. Ozzy will not. My Ozzy-loving friend Julie has talked me into attending the ceremony. We’ll be going with my brother Randy (of the aforementioned Sammy Hagar show which is ironic because Sammy Hagar is also attending). It seems Dua Lipa is slated to do the Cher tribute. This is a bit disappointing. I was hoping some older, establishment person would do the honors. But in many ways Cher is all about the future, not the past. But these legend tributes seem to always come from younger artists like Gwen Stefani (except when Steven Tyler did it or, recently, Meryl Streep).

The show will air on Disney+ which is just about the most unrock-and-roll channel imaginable (except that The Mayhem are on Disney+).

Last week the Hall of Fame released a tweet about Cher which was a closer look type thing. They mentioned her “distinctive voice”, “captivating stage presence” (which is way short of the real fact that she always steals focus), her “avant-garde fashion sense” (which is way short of calling out her huge rock-fashion influence), that she is a “generational force” (short for saying we didn’t think she would last this long), her “tenacious talent,” (which sounds great but what does that even mean?), and her “musical versatility” as showcased in the tweet with a short video on…”Believe”). What? “Believe” is important but it is hardly a showcase on her versatility. They should have referenced instead samples of her dance, rock, folk, pop, country, rap, r&b, torch, showtunes, opera, gospel and new wave music. Is that the best they could do?

I am going to this with a bit of skepticism that the Hall of Fame really appreciates Cher yet. This could just be the long-standing chip I have on my shoulder. But I just hope, if nothing else, we get a snapshot of Cher with Sammy Hagar out of this. I could usefully troll some brothers with that.

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 11

August 27, 2024 / Cher Scholar / 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.”

The LP version without the gospel singers
The LP version with the gospel singers
The radio edit version that has everything but the kitchen sink thrown in, including a groovy intro.

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.

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 9

August 13, 2024 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

Oh boy. I was feeling pretty good this weekend thinking we had only two more advice columns to review after this one. The questions about boys have been trying on my soul, especially this week’s responses from Sonny. Add to that the reading of the Susan Dey advice book, which is a nightmare of conflicting and problematic guidance for girls. Alarming warnings are made to not under any circumstances “chase” and then soon after there’s a chapter called “Chasing.”

It’s rough and I don’t know if I can make it through it. In fact, I’d put Susan Dey’s book right up there as one of the more difficult books I’ve ever read.

I’ve been complaining about these depressing time-capsules of dating advice to a few people and I hear in response the same thing: “That was a different time, Mary.” And I get that. Times have changed. And yet we are now hearing ever-louder calls for a return to this “quaintness” (from the Chief’s kicker, J.D. Vance, a whole slew of creepy people on Twitter/X). So…I don’t know. I still don’t feel like I’m on steady ground here as a girl. And I get a bit anxious just reading this shit.

This week I kept thinking thank God (thank God!!) I learned everything about boys and dating from John Hughes movies instead of columns and books like these. At least Jennifer Grey was allowed to be surly in Uncle Buck; and Molly Ringwald was allowed to be confused and critical in all of the John Hughes movies she was in. I can’t tell you how helpful that was to a confused person such as myself. That you could be just a normal person, not super feminine (see below) and the boys didn’t have to be “alphas.” In fact, those kinds of boys were played very villainously by actors like James Spader. Thank God also for the somewhat gender-fluid 1980s where boys could wear eye-liner and girls could have bi-lateral, funky hair. You had the freedom to explore ways of being. And maybe people were freaking out about it then, too, but those freak-outs were just off our radar screens.

Anyway, I was so happy to see the finish line with these old pressures of bad flirting and then I went into the Chersonian Institute (a.k.a. the Cher She-shed) this weekend and found two more lost columns! Eek! And one was compromised, so I went online afterwards to find a better copy and found another two more!!! Ack! So now we have six more to do instead of two. Oy vey.

So let’s keep going. I like the landscape photograph in this week’s column because I like to imagine Sonny and Cher are pondering over these letters and the weight of their responsibility in answering them.

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 [see them cross-sectioning above] 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, I don’t like the way I look and I want to do something about it. What should I do to change my looks and become a new me? Waiting, Charleston, S.C.

Cher’s Response:

Dear Waiting, I think it’s very exciting to do yourself over from head to toe once in a while. The first thing you should do is get a bunch of hair styling and beauty magazines (or, better yet, order 16’s Popularity and Beauty Book—see the ad on the following page). When you have gathered together all of these magazines, scan through them and try to find your type. Study all the types for people with a face shaped like yours. Are you round, oval or square? Magazines dealing with make-up and beauty tips cover all types. The hair magazines have setting and comb-out instructions for all lengths and colors of hair. The hair books also tell you how to correct faults—like if your hair is too curly, what to do, etc. [Just wait until the 1980s]. Try to get a girlfriend to join you in your campaign to re-do yourself. It is always more fun when you have someone to share your thoughts with and to exchange ideas with. The two of you could spend a “beauty weekend” together and probably come out with some great new results. Good luck.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

I got really into my local library’s coffee-table beauty books for a while as a tween. This is not to say I ever became good at it, but I do like all the do-dads and beauty artifacts. And I have always fantasized about the styling weekend with a girlfriend. Or even the spa weekend of the skin care side of things. But most of my girlfriends aren’t as interested in this stuff.

I also love the make-over in movies. There’s actually a scholarly book about this, The Makeover In Movies. I haven’t read it yet but it’s on my list. Cher’s makeover in Moonstruck would most definitely be addressed in this book, (she’s in the index), as this is an iconic makeover sequence in a movie. Cher visits a hair salon, buys a new dress and does her makeup slowly in her living room all in anticipation of a date to the opera with Nicholas Cage.

You can also see grooming images in Good Times and the ladies go through a somewhat big, albeit offscreen, transformation in The Witches of Eastwick. (It’s the sex doing the makeover in their case.) And we can’t forget the bad makeover Cher receives in Silkwood from her mortician girlfriend, where she’s made to look like a corpse by mistake and Drew is snarky about it and then Angela gets into a snit and moves out. And it’s a subtle one but the Madame at the whorehouse in Chastity does a creepy baby-doll dress makeover on Cher’s Chastity character. And then Cher tries to make herself presentable to her parents (and not look like a drug addict) in the movie Mask. (I tried to recreate that star necklace, by the way.)

So lot’s of Cher makeover moments in the movies, which is an understandable cinematic impulse because there have been so many Cher transformations in her personal timeline. Cher has always changed her look to suit the times and she seems to enjoy updating her personal and professional looks: from the grunge bangs and hippie duds of the 1960s to the sleek, long-haired goddess in jeans look of the 1970s to the big wigs and tight clothes of the 1980s, and it goes on.

Cher is much more outrageous than me in her explorations. I just like to try different brands of mascara.

Dear Cher, I am going with a boy I am not sure I really like. I go with him because I am lonely, but I really love my old boyfriend (who doesn’t love me). This new boy is nice and sweet. Do you think I am doing the wrong thing? In Need of Help, Bow, Washington

Cher’s Response:

Dear In Need of Help, You definitely are doing the wrong thing. If this boy is so nice, you should not lead him on—for eventually you will hurt him very deeply. If your old boyfriend snapped his fingers, you would go back to him in a flash and leave your present boyfriend suffering—just as you are suffering now. Since you know what it feels like to be hurt, learn something from it and don’t hurt this nice boy. Take my advice and you’ll be a better person for it.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

I don’t even think this would be Cher’s response anymore. I mean she didn’t have the same feelings for Gene Simmons she had for Gregg Allman. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Each relationship is its own weather system. Simmons, like this boy, had all the markings of a rebound relationship. Getting back on the horse, romantically speaking. Not every relationship is your forever home. Some are truly “We’ve Got Tonight” situations and this is fine if the two people are on the same page. All sorts of people are out there in the wilderness trying to find their way. And we can’t even assume that much about this relationship based on the question. The boy hasn’t weighed in about where he’s coming from.

Sometimes rebounds rebound again into something permanent. Seems to me what makes any relationship healthy is communication. So just make sure intentions are clear at all times and if or when feelings change, talk it out.

What is not okay is withholding your feelings about a relationship and leading another person into believing you are more serious or dedicated than you are. I have a very good friend who’s parents divorced when he was an adult because the husband had been having a marriage-long affair with a woman he had always considered his true love. The wife wasn’t as upset by the affair as she was by the fact that she had wasted her youth on a relationship that wasn’t true love.

There’s a difference between using someone and being lonely together.

That said, relationships are very complicated and even in my friend’s parents’ case, who’s to say what was going on and what torment people go through when they are navigating current relationships and when to end them. For example, why did Sonny stay with Cher when he was often distracted by other women? I’m sure his motivations were complicated: loyalty to Cher, desire to keep the money coming in, true affection. Why did Cher stay with Sonny so long during that same time? As Cher has said over and over, theirs was a very complicated relationship. She saw Sonny as a parental figure to her, a lover, a sibling, a co-parent to Chastity. Relationships are rarely smoothly operating machines or rarely cleanly broken off. It’s almost a topic that is beyond advice.

Sonny gave Cher a big wet kiss immediately after their divorce hearing! A very public kiss. Cher says it was hard to stay mad at Sonny, even minutes after a custody battle. Sounds very complicated to me.

Dear Cher, My parents won’t let me buy records or any of the other things teenagers like, even though it’s my own money. How can I convince them that it’s my money and that they should let me do what I like with it? Kar, Northbrook, Ill.

Cher’s Response:

Dear Kar, If you earn this money, either by babysitting or by doing other work, then you should be allowed to buy anything you wish with it within reason. If you get an allowance, you might tell your mother you are willing to set aside a certain amount of it for savings, but that you feel you should spend the rest on harmless “fun” things you enjoy.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

This is a tough one. Teenage years are mostly about testing your independence. Some very controlling parents out there inflict an “anything under my roof goes by my rules” policy. My parents were not like this (that practically had to push me out of the nest) although they were what you would consider strict in many ways. I was the last in line and my parents were pretty laissez-faire by the time I came along. They didn’t much notice what I was doing with my little amount of money. I was saving up my lunch money and buying record albums and Taco Bell dinners with friends. Nothing to test a “within reason” qualification. I wouldn’t even have known where to find the unreasonable stuff. But I was below everyone’s radar, I’m pretty sure. Recently, a family member labeled me as a goth kid, which surprised me because I had pink wallpaper, pink carpet and listened to Barry Manilow all day. But I guess within those confines, I was kind of a Barry-Manilow-listening, pink-loving kind of sad kid. Maybe a Pink Goth. Was that a thing? No it was not.

Some parents believe in providing trust until trust is broken. Some parents have to control every aspect of their habitats. And I don’t know any way around those kinds of parents aside from hanging in there until you can secure your own independence and move out as soon as you can. I don’t see this type of parent being suddenly convinced by arguments from Cher in 16 Magazine. In fact, I think those parents turned out to be some of the Cher-haters we see out there today. “That hippie Cher tried to corrupt our daughter Kar!”

This is a real problem, though, especially now that there is a whole segment of the population trying to re-define what it means to be a girl, limiting her choices in marriage, family planning and education, let alone all the fun teenage stuff.

But in this case, it could also be a parent who has come from nothing who is attempting to teach their kid about saving money or goal planning and not fettering all their monies on movie tickets and rock-and-roll records.

I’m sort of thankful for the latitude I did receive. It allowed me to follow my intellectual pursuits and learn self-sufficiency, which is what my parents wanted for me (including and maybe especially my father), not to depend on relationships for those things. But that’s not every parental motive out there so…

I don’t know what kind of parents Sonny and Cher were. Chaz Bono has written about this mostly in Becoming Chaz. Cher was gone a lot and some of the nannies seemed better than others. Elijah spent time in boarding schools which he seems to resent.

I haven’t talked to any parent who doesn’t bemoan the fact of how difficult parenting is. Just existentially hard. How you never really know what you’re doing. Short of abuse, it’s good to give parents some latitude for screw-ups. ‘

Does not letting your kid have popular music constitute abuse? I don’t know. I do know a lot of kids who grew up in restrictive households that forbade pop-culture and junk foods and as adults these friends of mine now have trouble navigating moderation with those very things. I’ve also seen problems resulting from over-indulgence. Teaching moderation itself seems to be a good idea.

Dear Sonny, I have a crush on a boy in my class. I think he likes me. How should I act? Just Asking, Bellflower, Calif.

Sonny’s Response:

Dear Just Asking, When you are around this boy, act sweet and not snooty. Don’t go overboard and come on too strong, but at the same time don’t be shy. Let him know “diplomatically” that you’re interested, and then see if he responds. If he does, show him that you are really interested in him, but at the same time try to make him feel that he is flirting with you—not you with him. Try to start one of those “accidental” conversations. Find out what his interests are, and if they are different from yours “bone-up” so that when and if you talk to him, you will be able to say something he wants to hear. Good luck.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Good luck, indeed. Does dating in this world require a poli sci degree so you can flirt “diplomatically?” Just asking, myself.

“At the same time,” maybe I’m also just asking for a friend. Like all of them. Because this is crazy-making. There are two “but at the same times” in Sonny’s headache-inducing response. And that’s not okay. But at the same time….no, still not okay.

There was a very sweet Muppets (ABC) episode, “A Tail of Two Piggies” where Gonzo, Pepe and Rizzo became bachelor roommates and were having trouble getting “the womens” (as Pepe says) to come to their house parties. They discovered that one of the best ways to initiate friendship with women was to become interested in what they were interested in. I think this is fine advice. But it could also send you off in a direction that is both a flirting-fail and something that changes the trajectory of your life. This has happened multiple times in my life, once when I tried to become a better high school student because I thought boys liked smart girls and another time I became interested in Buddhism and then 42 books later—this.

What’s not okay is all the intricacies around how to flirt properly. This is simply the tortured evolution of culture and it becomes stupid at some point You can’t manage that tightrope of flirting rules all while trying to “be yourself.” Just not compatible tasks. And you might be a genuinely annoying self. What then? Then maybe what you do is to go work on yourself—just in general. The whole population will probably appreciate that, not just someone you fancy. Work on being less annoying (which is full-time job for some of us, I get it). Keep tweaking into a self you feel you can comfortably be. You may not match up comfortably with people you like. They might even get annoyed with your best self. As unfortunately as that is, the alternative is pretty grim.

One of the saddest of the Hans Christian Andersen stories is “The Little Mermaid” which is a cautionary tale about this very thing, trying to be what someone else wants all while losing yourself in the process.

I guess in all things, moderation. It’s hard.

Dating is full of strife in Cher movies. Sonny and Cher battle about their futures in Good Times. There are all those poor fellows who try to decipher Cher’s character in Chastity, Dolly’s short burn-out with Angela in Silkwood, Rusty’s comparatively stable romance with Gar in Mask, the various jealousies that develop with the foursome in The Witches of Eastwick, the illicit affair with a juror in Suspect, the tumultuous beginning for Lorretta and Ronny in Moonstruck, the silly and sad relationship between the flighty Mrs. Flax and Lou in Mermaids.

The women don’t ever behave as Sonny advises girls to behave in any of these stories, nor did Cher herself ultimately behave that way. In fact, you can make a case they all flirted pretty badly in a plethora of wonderful ways.

Dear Sonny, Doesn’t femininity count with a guy nowadays? To be popular, does a girl have to be immodest? Where I live, it seems that ladylike girls are “duds.” What’ is your opinion? Curious, Medina, Ohio

Sonny’s Response:

Dear Curious, No matter how a guy acts, in his heart he much prefers a feminine girl. He will go out with girls who come on strong, but not more than once or twice. Stick to your principles. Be your real self at all times. You may have to wait a little longer to get asked out on dates, but when you do it will be guys who really respect you.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

(By the way, I was just in Medina, Ohio.)

First of all, this unfortunate answer says more about Sonny than anything. This is dating advice dreck, this “boys only really like nice girls” answer.

Secondly, I can’t tell if this “immodesty” refers to mini-skirts or free love. I also can’t tell if this is a parent writing in masquerading as a teen.

Some guys (and girls) are attracted to sporty girls, to bad girls, to nutty girls, to “feminine” girls. Some people are attracted to others who are sometimes sporty, sometimes tom-boys, sometimes feminine and sometimes every other type of way to be a person. What a weird idea that flirting has to be so performative toward femininity.

Sonny is definitely not the best person to be answering this question. In fact, it’s relevant to consider Sonny’s age here. He is ten-to-fifteen years older than these hippie tweens and his answer is going to be much more antiquated than, say, if Paul McCartney were answering these letters. This was a time of sexual revolution and it made many older adults, like Sonny, very uncomfortable.

“Guys who really respect you.” Please. You know where you can put that respect, right? As a girl who didn’t fool around enough, I will defend any girl who did.

Do you need his respect? No, you don’t. Do you need your self-respect? Yes, you do. Let that be the guiding principles you stick to. If you don’t want to be “immodest,” whatever that is, don’t. If you don’t feel particularly modest, go out there and live your best life. For me, this modesty shit is part of the fetishization of virginity. Which is all to say men have historically wanted to determine how and women should mate and procreate.

It was a different time. Well, different times are always around the corner again. I am just very thankful to have grown up in the time I did, as a carefree pop-culture addicted Gen-Xer in the 1980s.

I don’t even think this answer has anything to do with how Sonny or Cher behaved as young adults either, or at least Cher who was an aspiring street kid.

One of the amazing things about The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour was how they refashioned the vamps of history as sexually independent, provocative and ultimately persevering women. Better examples of being a human could be found there.

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 8

August 7, 2024 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

This week’s installment of Dear Sonny & Cher has a new preamble. And Sonny redeems himself from last week’s creepy, player response. We get an almost sultry picture of Cher this time with lots of eyeliner and mascara. We also get a photo of Sonny attempting sultriness but hitting more goofiness with that officer’s cap.

Being young is no fun if you’re worried about your appearance, nervous about how to act, upset about your boyfriend or unhappy about the way your parents treat you. It’s even worse if you have no one to confide in, no one who can help you solve your problems with sound advice.

Sonny and I want to help you in every way we possibly can. If you have a problem an older girl could best help you solve, write to me (Cher). If it’s the kind of problem a guy can best help you solve, write to Sonny. We can’t promise to answer every letter we receive—we receive so many letters, that would be impossible. But [e]very month Sonny and I carefully select a cross-section of the letters representing your most acute problems—so even though your problem many not be answered directly, it will be answered!

As you see, our space is limited and we can only advise on a few problems at a time. So if your problem isn’t discussed in this issue of 16, please look again next month—for sooner or later you will find your problem and our advice right here in 16 Magazine.

Dear Cher, I have these dreadful dark circles under my eyes. They make me look like I have two black eyes. I get plenty of rest and have a proper diet—I’ve tried to cover the circles with makeup, but nothing helps. What can I do? Black Eyes, St. Clair Shores, Mich.

Cher’s Response:

Dear Black Eyes, I have three answers. One: dark circles are sometimes inherited and there is nothing you can do about them. Two: are you in good health? Dark circles sometimes indicate anything from kidney disorder to a mild virus. You should ask your doctor about these dark circles. Three: if you find they are not inherited and not caused by poor health, then go back to the makeup treatment. I suggest that you try Yeardley Eyeliter (you know, like they advertise on The Monkees). I, too, have a tendency toward dark circles, and this product has done miracles for me.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

I wonder what Monkees advertisement she means. I couldn’t find an eyeliter commercial but I did find this hilarious Monkees Yardly Black Label commercial (“Be the guy’s who’s got it!”) I found an image of the eyeliter product (listed as an “antique”) on Pinterest:

There are now similar natural remedies for dark eye circles. There are also undereye concealers still to buy. Cher has always been interested in beauty products and giving advice on them. Here are a few I found today:

1. “I tried Cher’s Favorite Shampoo and Conditioner for a Week!” (Video) in which an influencer goes through recent Cher product plugs. What a fabulously fun idea to try these all!

2 “Cher, 75, Reveals the $7 Drugstore Face Wash She Loves for Sensitive Skin” (Article) – it’s nice that a lot of these plugs are drugstore brands.

3. “Cher’s Favorite Beauty Products that you can still buy today” (Video)

4. What Cher Has To Say About Beauty (Article)

Okay, they’re not all drugstore brands but you can play with them or not as you can afford to.

Speaking of makeup tricks, Cher has also appeared in books by makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin including “Making Faces” and “Face Forward.”

You can get as exuberant or cynical about beauty products as you want. Even after spending billions of dollars on skin care and makeup, no product really moves the needle all that much.

And we are fed a bill-of-goods half the time. I recently had an alarming experience with lady razors. I was visiting my parents last month and didn’t have a good razor to use before a birthday massage. I went combing through my mother’s guest bathroom drawers and could find only an unopened Gillette Fusion men’s razor most likely left by my brother as he was their most recent overnight guest.

Now I don’t go scrummaging through Mr. Cher Scholar’s man-stuff so I have never had the opportunity to use a men’s razor but out of desperation I decided to use this one. It was heavy. It wasn’t pink. What if it peeled off my delicate lady skin? I was seriously petrified right before using it. Like I might bleed to death by using that extra blade. Wait a minute. Why do the mens get that extra blade? After doing one leg and experiencing the closest shave I’ve ever felt in my life, I got pissed for all woman kind. WTF. They’ve been selling us sub-par f**king razors!

And the truth of it is women shave their legs in America is because companies like Gillette wanted to expand the sales of razors and used women’s magazines to convince women we should have hairless all-the-things.

And then they go and sell us shitty pink razors!

Dear Cher, I’m 13 years old and this is my problem: I’ve liked this boy who lives near me for a long time. I told this to a few of my friends, and soon I realized that someone had told him about it too. One of my friends told me that he had said he liked me. When we had school pictures taken, all of us kids were trading our extra pictures with one another. I wanted to trade one with him, so that I could have a picture of him, and I mentioned this to a couple of my girl friends. I feel pretty sure that at least one of them told him. After that, he got very nasty to me, and one day in the library he told me that he hated me. Please help me. Brokenhearted, Gilbert, Minn.

Cher’s Response:

Dear Brokenhearted, Why, er, why {“why, er, why?”] did you have to tell the world about your feeling for this boy? If you are really honest about it, you knew that telling three friends was like broadcasting it. To have them tell him that you like him was O.K. But the thing about the pictures was—well, coming on too strong and it looked like you were chasing him. Naturally, he recoiled from this feeling of being captured. The fact is, a girl can flirt a little, but she has to draw the line somewhere, because the boy likes to capture her and not be captured. The only think you can do now is keep your mouth shut, maintain your cool and wait. Maybe if you are quiet and demure long enough, he will come back to you.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Ugh. This is the most depressing response I’ve ever read. Whatever happened to entireties to honesty? No, not honesty right now. First, pretend you are Cinderella and flee the scene without a shoe. These crazy courtship rituals.

My bad advice would be to roll your eyes, Snow White, and go find dwarves without hang ups. Friendlier pastures. Friendship knows nothing about forwardness and faux pas. I have no patience for these subtleties of chasing vs. demurring. As a naturally quiet person (believe it or not), demurring is my natural state but so what? In defense of all the forward girls, everyone needs to grow up. The games of playing hard to get will seem stupid when you’re on your death bed. Asking for a picture should not seem like some kind of dreadful “chasing.”

But happily we have alternate advice. The Susan Dey book, Secrets On Boys, Beauty & Popularity, has arrived and I’ve started reading it. And wouldn’t you know, this very issue is addressed in the first chapter called very succinctly “Boys,”

Fasten your seat belts because we are going to hear from the teen-idol-of-teen-idols himself.

“Boys—especially teen-age boys—are runners up to the Sphinx when it comes to letting a girl know whether the romance is one-sided or whether he cares, too. I used to think this was just because boys were unexplainably nasty and mean about this but then I had a heart-to-heart talk with David Cassidy, and he let me in on a few things.

Mostly, a guy worries about letting a girl know he likes her too much. One slip of the tongue, a boy thinks, and pretty soon Doris and Ella and Sue and Ruth and Jean and Barbara and Claudian and Marie and Carol and Connie and Ann and Dorothy will know. What’s worse, a boy thinks, is that they’ll tell Sam, Dave, Fred, George, Roger, Russ, Ralph, Steve, Kenny, and Chuck next. Soon, continues this nightmare that a boy dreams up for himself, Mom, Dad, little brother, and Aunt Agnes will all be bugging him about his First True Love. All this is enough, in a boy’s mind, to convince him that he really doesn’t love this special girl at all!.

David says it’s a big step for a boy to admit, to himself or publicly, that he likes a girl because girls have been doll-carrying sissies [oh dear] for so long that as far as a boy is concerned, finding yourself in love with one is a major shock. The first thing a rough, tough….boy does, David says, is seriously question his sanity!”

Well, that does explain how a this boy can go from liking Brokenhearted girl to freaking out over a school picture and telling her he hates her. That is if we can believe David Cassidy is speaking for many of the other boys and not just the troubled David Cassidy.

But there’s yet another way to look at this. My high school friend went off to college and met a boy she liked a lot but she was in competition with another girl. Eventually this boy chose her and she asked him why he did so. He said it was because he was going to go out with the one who was the most aggressive in trying to date him. My friend was proud of her winnings but I thought her prize was a big dud who had no real dog in the fight and might possibly not even be able to feel love for either of them or maybe anybody.

Love asserts itself pretty pretty strongly. It shouldn’t be so hard an Olympic trial is required. If there wasn’t one thing more substantial to love about my friend besides her “trying hard” than that relationship would always be vulnerable to a future competitor willing to try even harder.

The point is neither of these extremes is good: pirate-afraid-of-capture guy or immovable-statue guy. What we all need is flexibility in a person.

Equally problematic are those who look for hard-and-fast roles from another person. I had another eternally single friend who once said she wanted to be the garden and not the gardener. She meant she wants to be taken care of without having to take care of. This is just not the description of a healthy relationship. Nobody has explained it better recently than Michelle Obama in her new book, The Light We Carry. This is an absolutely beautiful description of a healthy couple:

“….you’ll almost certainly come to see that there’s no such thing as a fifty-fifty balance. Instead, it’ll be like beads on an abacus, sliding back and forth—the math rarely tidy, the equation never quite solved. A relationship is dynamic this way, full of change, always evolving. At no point will both of you feel like things are perfectly fair and equal. Someone will always be adjusting. Someone will always be sacrificing. One person may be up while the other is down…in a strong partnership, both people will take their turns at compromise, building that shared sense of home together, there in the in-between.

Regardless of how wildly and deeply in love you are, you will be required to ignore all sorts of your partner’s foibles. You will be be required to ignore all sorts of minor irritations and at least a few major ones, too, trying to assert love and constancy over all of it—over all the rough spots and inevitable disruptions. You will need to do this as often and as compassionately as you can. And you will need to be doing it with someone who is equally able and willing to create the same latitude and show the same forbearance toward you—to love you despite all the baggage you show up with, despite what you look like and how you behave when you are at your absolute worst.”

And I know we’re talking about kids here. But let’s just give them some insight into how things should be right from the start.

This is one of my favorite pictures of Cher and Robert Camilletti. It’s from her first commercial for Uninhibited perfume in the late 1980s. That is the goal of any relationship, to be uninhibited. You shouldn’t have to worry about being demure or aggressive or whatever it is you “supposed” to be. You should feel free to be who you are. And that is hard enough between two very different people. Why throw in additional crap about how the thing should or shouldn’t get going?

Dear Sonny, I have been told that I’m cute. [Again with the I’ve been told I’m cute thing.] I feel that I’m popular in school and well-loved at home. I don’t have a particular problem but I do have a request. Please tell me your idea of a perfect girl—her personality, clothes and her popularity standing. Needing Ideas, Arlington Heights, Ill.

Sonny’s Response:

Dear Needing Ideas, Surprise! There is no such thing as a perfect girl, so don’t try to become one. If you do, you’ll probably ruin everything that you now have. Your personality should be unique and your very won. Clothes don’t make the girl, as you know. [She doesn’t seem to know, Sonny.] It’s good to have friends, because they are true friends; it’s good to be liked, because you’re likable; but popularity just for the sake of being popular is of absolutely no value. Just be yourself and don’t worry about these extraneous things.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Great response Sonny. What makes me think it will be lost on this Needing Ideas girl?

I have a member of the family in pursuit of a very hard line perfection and I have said the same thing to them. Perfection is like a pretty and smooth surface without anything for another person to hook on to. It’s ultimately alienating. Which is why we develop our deep affections for flaws. Think about someone you love. Think of their rough parts. Those are the hooks, the heart hooks. We’re not talking about homicidal flaws or battery-level flaws. We’re talking about the exhaustion of perfection and the endearments toward things that are less than perfect (and sometimes downright broken) in others and in ourselves. We each have those things that pull on our heart-strings and those things are never perfections.

Cher is a great example of this. I have never been attracted to the kind of men she is attracted to. We all have our things we like or don’t like. Cher is not drawn to classically beautiful men. She is truly a woman who has followed her heart in these matters.

Dear Sonny, My question can only be answered by a guy. Please tell me honestly how guys feel about freckles. I’m loaded with them and I hate them. A suntan doesn’t cover them up because they pop through—and makeup does no good. Freckles, Chicago, Ill.

Sonny’s Response:

Dear Freckles, Forget them. Period. By noticing them so much, you are literally turning mole hills into mountains [well, not literally…literally they’re freckles]. Because you are so uptight about your freckles, you think that everybody else does nothing but stare at them. Not so. They may notice them for the first ten or twenty seconds they see you, but human beings are so constructed that (unless they are just plain evil) their eyes and minds are more interested in the human being and not in surface distractions. Freckles aren’t a fault. They’re a fact. Since you can’t do anything about them, leave them alone. Concentrate on your good points. I used to be excruciatingly self-conscious about my nose, and I learned to practice what I’m preaching to you now. Believe me, it helped. When I started concentrating on my good points, I started doing groovy things. By the way, there are some examples of freckle-laden ladies who decided to ignore their freckles—Doris Day, Julie Andrews, model Jean Shrimpton and Jane Asher.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Perfect answer, Sonny. I have nothing to add. Freckles are sexy.

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 7

July 30, 2024 / Cher Scholar / 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.

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:

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 4

July 7, 2024 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

We are here today with the next installment of Dear Cher (and later Sonny) from 16 Magazine. From this new preamble, we can tell this is column number two. I really should have ordered these.

We also get an unusually earnest photo choice, maybe meant to engender some trust here. I’d say it’s working. I, myself, am ready to divulge my deepest, darkest secrets to 1960s Cher. Luckily this column redux isn’t (all) about me so I won’t have to.

We’re only four columns into this exercise and we can already see recurring teen-girl themes. A “life full of problems” amounts to basically two things, boys and insecurity about how we look. No one is struggling to raise money to backpack across Europe or training to become Amelia Earhart. (Don’t look at me. I wasn’t either.) That’s too bad but not surprising, I guess.

Here we go:

“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 wants help you—right here in the pages of 16!

HELLO AGAIN!

As you know, last month I started a regular column in 16 in which I will answer the letters you write to me and attempt to help you in any way I can with your problems—large or small. When you write to me (since most of your letters are of a very personal nature), if you choose to use a code name I will write back to you in that name. Each month I will answer as many of your letters as I possibly can, so keep looking here for your reply.

Dear Cher, There is a boy who lives near me who hangs out at the soda shop where all we kids go in the afternoon [all we kids?]. If I see him on our block and he is alone, he speaks to me and seems to be very friendly, but when I see him with the gang down [at] the soda shop, he doesn’t speak and looks right through me. I really like him very much (in fact, I think I am in love with him), but I don’t know how he feels. He sure does act funny. What can I do? Confused, Little Rock, Ark.

Cher’s Response:

You didn’t tell me your age (most of you forget to do that when you write—try not to, for it is helpful to know how old you are when I am writing my answers to you), but I’d guess that you are about 14 or 15 and he is about a year older than you. The reason I guess these ages is because of his behavior. Most boys of 14 or 15 are really and truly interested in girls, but they are still sort of shy about it and hate the idea of their buddies catching them showing interest in a girl—for they will get teased unmercifully about it. What this boy does is speak to you (because he wants to and probably likes you) when there is no one else around, and when he is in the company of his pals he clams up rather than risk their ridicule. You have to try to be understanding. There is no great mystery to his behavior. Just give him a very pleasant smile when you pass in him in “public” and don’t expect him to speak (he’ll get around to it one day, so don’t worry). He will appreciate your discretion and sensitivity to his “plight” and like you all the more for it.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Dear Confused, we saw this very issue come up a few weeks ago in Part 2, “How Do You Know When He Cares?” as a sign of his seriousness or unseriousness and at that time I alluded to the disturbing story by the writer Roxanne Gay from her book Bad Feminist. In her case, the same behavior was a big red flag. The boy was grooming her for a gang rape.

But I like how Cher brings the age range into consideration here. An older boy behaving this way might seriously be a red flag: either he’s a jerk or worse. But Cher brings up a good point about younger boys. They’re swimming in the proverbial shark tank of love without their swimmies. As awful as teen girlhood can be, being a young boy has always sounded much worse. So some sympathy goes there, for sure.

But this behavior also signifies the fact that this boy is probably not yet ready for girls. And this is fine. There seems to be a pressure during this period of boyhood to simultaneous like girls and not like girls. Which is very confusing for the girls. I’ve written about this elsewhere but I never understood what the mad dash was all about. Why were we all in such a rush? Ok, I was a tad slow in this area and most of the boys were ready long before I was, so I missed this whole awkward, confusing phase. But I had to sit and listen to all my girlfriends go through it which was truly awful, once removed.

Part of dating another person is the melding of the friend groups. And since you’re not the same people, these are never the same friend groups. Drama can ensue. Sometimes the friends don’t even like each other. But it’s part of the process. I’ve seen some of my friends (men and women both) compartmentalize their dating life. You could be hanging out with them for years before ever meeting their significant other. It’s not terrible but it’s not healthy either. It’s like having part of your life in quarantine. Now if you’re dating the mad woman (or man) in the attic like Mr. Rochester was, then maybe you want to keep this person from your friends. But wouldn’t you rather have friends who understand?

Honestly, this doesn’t sound like a Cher response to me. I don’t think Cher would put up with this for very long. I could be wrong but I don’t see her having much patience for this sort of thing considering she doesn’t feel men are a necessity. I also can’t see a self-respecting Sonny or Robert Camilletti doing this. Cher says Gregg Allman and Les Dudek were very nice. Maybe Gene Simmons would do this. Yeah, probably Gene Simmons. But I don’t think she took much grief off Gene Simmons either.

Look, she made him carry Gregg Allman’s baby:

Dear Cher, My parents consider it “wild” to have long hair, wear short skirt[s] and listen to rock and roll music—and forget about boys! I am 15, I get good grades, and I work part-time during the summer. I’m not wild, but I do like rock and roll and all the other things I mentioned, including boys [don’t forget the boys]. Please, please help me. “Sally,” Spokane, Wash.

Cher’s Response:

Dear “Sally,” You sound to me like a reliable, level-headed young girl who just wants to [buy Sonny & Cher records and] have some fun once in a while. I think you might try asking your mother to sit down with you for a talk (mothers are usually more understanding about these things than dads are). Tell her that you can be trusted, that you just want to follow the fashions in a normal way—and that dancing, music and boys are also a part of being normal. Tell her that you will introduce her to any boy you go out with (I know that’s a pain, but you must admit it’s worth a try), and that you will gladly bring your other friends home for her to meet and approve. Ask her to give you a certain period of time (like a month) to prove that you can do all the things you wish to without being (or becoming) wild. Come through your “trial” period with all A pluses and I am sure your troubles will be over.

[For some reason, this week’s column was full of typos like “busic and boys” (busic is a combination of booze and boys maybe), a “certan period of time” and “of prove that” [I had to choose between “to prove that” or “of proof that.”]

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Dear Spokane Sally, Cher left home at 16. That’s how Cher handled it. She moved in with some girlfriends in Hollywood, got kicked out and moved in with a man who could have gotten arrested for it.

I myself had the opposite experience with my parents. I was so afraid I’d run afoul of some bad situation, I religiously told my parents everywhere I was planning to go. They found this problematically annoying. I would be like, “send out a search party if I’m not home by daylight” and they would look at me warily like, “well, maybe by noon we’ll look into it.”

Ugh. I’ll be dead by then! First 48!

When I finally did move out they were very skeptical that I would be able to fend for myself. To be honest, I was skeptical as well. But love can give you the power to do many adulting things, I’m here to tell you. I think my family would have liked for me to be wilder. They certainly all were. So I entirely relate to this goody-two-shoes who likes rock and roll. If I would have said, “I just want to follow fashions in a normal way” my mother would have cried with joy.

In the novel Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace talks about how every generation of fathers was a rejection of the previous generation, like a see-saw of points of view. Cher was from a musical family so I don’t think music was an issue per se, but Cher’s wildness was. Her mother didn’t know what to do. And Cher often says Chas was more conservative than she was, the indicative story being the time Chastity once stood in the bathroom with her mother, barring the door in order to prevent Cher from getting a mohawk. So Cher got a mohawk colored onto her head instead.

Dear Cher, What about us ugly girls? I am 12 years old and I am (not chubby, fat), really homely in the face. [Oh dear, the classic butterface.] I have no friends and spend all my time alone day-dreaming. I want to be liked and to have some fun, but I can’t seem to get anywhere. can you give us “uglies” some advice? Homely, Chicago, Ill.

Cher’s Response:

Dear Homely, I admire your honesty. Instead of beating around the bush, you get right to the heart of the problem—so I’ll get right to the heart of the solution. Every single person living on the face of this earth has something good and beautiful in them. Behind the homely face there is often a sensitive soul, and many a fat girl houses an understanding heart. You must endeavor to seek out your own good qualities and then to develop them. I remember a fat girl in our school whom everybody loved because she was so good and kind. We all went to her with our problems and she became more dear to us than the pretty, popular girls who were just good for “decoration.” I am sure that you have some wonderful thoughts and some fine feelings buried in you. You must forget that you are not “Nature’s favorite” and start concentrating on the positive side of yourself. Remember to go about with a smile on your face (even when you feel blue), to be clean, and neat, and don’t be afraid to reach out to others—even if you feel they may reject you. If you reach out often enough, sooner or later you will find them—in turn—reaching back for you.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Dear Unfinished Person, You’re only 12! Oy. As they say about growing faces, there’s still a lot of football left to play. Okay, they don’t say that about young faces, but they should.

I’ve encountered mean and cruel people in all shapes and sizes. I see no correlation. But since beauty is a cultural idea 100%, I’ve seen some people become very bitter about being born out of time, so to speak. Being voluptuous when thin is in, having the wrong face for where and when they were born. If you happen have attributes a culture considers better than others, life can be easier for you no doubt. But so what. Everyone should endeavor to seek out their good qualities and develop them. And I honestly cant imagine any human animal right now being “Nature’s favorite.” Please. I also think it’s fine to refrain from having a smile on your face 24/7 if you’re just not feelin it. We need to learn how to cope with feelings but letting ourselves have some.

What does a homely face even mean in all the culture blather anyway? American culture didn’t consider women like Cher beautiful for hundreds of years. I, for one, am not buying into it.

Cher Scholar Catches Up

April 28, 2024 / Cher Scholar / 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.

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

Category: Peripherals (Page 1 of 21)

So Much Stuff!

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 14

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 13

Little Bites

Lawsuits

Chaz Bono Appearances

Ted Lasso and Cher

Sammy Hagar

Cher Show on the Road

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 11

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 9

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 8

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 7

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 4

Cher Scholar Catches Up

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