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Sonny & Cher Live in 1972

August 23, 2024 / / 0 Comments

So last week Cher scholar Michael sent me an essay that somebody published which was basically a strategy paper for the later-day variety show of Sonny & Cher. Not a paper from 1978. A paper from 2024. Which is shocking in itself, as Cher scholar Michael pointed out.

There were a few issues with the brief paper, including no specific examples, certain factual inaccuracies around the timing of Nelsen ratings, a lack of understanding the show’s then-significance on women, a seeming lack of correctly reading the second variety show’s tone and themes of humor and, most interesting, the suggestion that writers of the second show should play off Cher’s singlehood, an idea which exposed the possibility that the paper’s author had not seen Cher’s interim solo show on CBS or knew about her new marriage to Gregg Allman and subsequent pregnancy during the second show.

But then again, this is deep-fan knowledge these days. Even people who saw the show on live TV have all but forgotten those scandalous details, although they were public enough at the time to make jokes about on the show. I chalk this up to the gravitational force of Sonny & Cher. What rockstar romance could compete?

But seriously, I am always surprised that the general public does not know about Cher’s second marriage to Gregg Allman or that she has a second son. It reminds me of my own surprise upon learning that Elizabeth Taylor had any children. It’s like if you don’t hear from a celebrity’s offspring either doing very well or very poorly or writing a tell-all book about their childhoods, they don’t seem to exist in the somewhat-fictional star-o-sphere.

But anyway, the paper did have a gem. It included an image of this 1972 Sonny and Cher concert review. Scholar-score! I’m going to type out the full review here because it illustrates how big Sonny & Cher were in 1972 and how different the assessment was then of Cher’s talent. For some reason, she was less of a target when she was married and more of a target when she was a solo artist. We should think on that for a bit.

Sonny, Cher Pack Arena by Mike Kalina
from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 16, 1972

A capacity Civic Arena crowd last night was treated to a lion’s “Cher” of music as Mr. and Mrs. Bono—also known as Sonny & Cher—performed in a concert in which the distaff side of singing team radiated throughout.

Sonny and Cher opened their act with “All I Ever Need Is You” and proceeded to do most of the hits that made them famous including “The Beat Goes On,” “I Got You Babe,” and “A Cowboy’s Work Is Never Done.”

Sonny’s only solo was “You Better Sit Down Kids” which originally was a hit when Cher recorded it in the late 60s. Among the numbers Cher soloed on were “Gypsys Tramps and Thieves” and “The Way of Love.”

In all her numbers, Cher showed off her surprisingly powerful voice which also can convey great warmth and feeling. Other numbers were the Nilsson hit “Without You,” “Rainy Day Feeling,” “United We Stand” and “the Carole King tune, “You’ve Got a Friend.”

Although Cher is clearly the stronger of the two vocally, she never overly-dominated the performance as a good wife shouldn’t. [Oh boy.] Both projected warmth to the audience in not only their numbers but also in their brief chats with the crowd before the songs.The couple interspersed their numbers with comedy patter, much in the same vein as the routines they do on television. I think a lot of the jokes that they did, all of which I had heard them do before, took up a little too much time, which could more judiciously have been spent singing.

[A recent comic was discussing this situation on a TikTok reel the perishability of jokes in contrast to the robustness of older songs in a music set. There’s a pressure to produce new jokes in comedy, alternatively to play old songs in pop and rock shows. I could see how this might put pressure on an act that does both, like the Smothers Brothers or Flight of the Conchords or Sonny & Cher.]

Two songs they weren’t able to fit into the show were “Living in a House Divided” and “When You Say Love” both of which are big sellers now.

[I am surprised those songs were big enough hits to warrant a note about a review missing them; but it’s also interesting to see that Sonny & Cher weren’t pushing their hits on the record shelves.]

The crowd was estimated at 14,200, a record for the Arena which previously had been held by the recent show here by the Rolling Stones.

[Ok, let’s mention that again for those watching from any Halls of Fames: Sonny & Cher broke the arena record set by the Rolling Stones in Pittsburgh. in 1972.]

Sonny and Cher previously had appeared at the Arena in 1966 but their popularity was not nearly as great as it is today. In a pre-concert interview they both agreed that they owed a lot of their current fame to their television program. Also, they said that their act today has more of a general appeal than it did when they played the Arena the last time when their records were the only thing they had going for them.

Backstage the superstar couple was very pleasant with reporters and gave a rather candid interview which touched on the high—and low—points of their career. They also posed for photos and signed autographs not as though it was a chore, as many stars give the impression, but as if they enjoyed it.

Opening the show was bright young comedian David Brenner, who is familiar to viewers of the Johnny Carson show. Brenner said that several years ago his career was given a big shot in the arm by an engagement at the Civic Arena which opened up a lot of doors to future concert dates.

“I owe a lot to this place,” he said.

Just eight years later People magazine will note “Cher’s shallow talents,” a comment the likes of which we would see throughout the next few decades for her shows and records. In fact, I don’t think she ever received a good review from Entertainment Weekly ever. This 1972 review also illustrates why Cher may have wanted to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as Sonny & Cher and not just as a solo act because we often forget that this duo did break some records, too.

Here is another set of two reviews from March 1972 in Fort Wayne, Indiana (with photos) and a photo snippet from September of 1972 where Steve Martin opened for them in Memphis:

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 10

August 20, 2024 / / 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

Cher’s Response:

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

Cher Scholar’s Response:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cher’s Response:

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

Cher Scholar’s Response:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cher’s Response:

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

Cher Scholar’s Response:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sonny’s Response:

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

Cher Scholar’s Response:

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

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

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

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

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

Sonny’s Response:

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

Cher Scholar’s Response:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 9

August 13, 2024 / / 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.

 

Read more Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 8

August 7, 2024 / / 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.

 

Read more Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine

It’s a Good Day To Be a Cher Fan

August 6, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Recently I was sitting on my ex-sister-in-laws couch waiting to leave for a concert and she was telling me about all the stuff she was trying to get rid of and so I showed her all the Cher stuff I had pre-ordered sitting on my Amazon orders page. I’m going the other way, you see.

Sonny & Cher Compilation – out now

While I was gone I ordered the new Sonny & Cher “curated” compilation from the Now Playing series (I got mine from Barnes & Noble). The comp only has 10 songs on sea-blue vinyl. There are some unusual choices in the non-hit “Sing C’est La Vie” and the Cher solo non-hit “Walk on Guilded Splinters.”

Cher Compilations – out 20 September

The day I left for Boston Cher released news of a new compilations series “Cher Forever Classics” and “Forever Fan.” This was a confusing set of options to sort through, different media, different track lists and different cover art choices. I’m also confused about the title. The CD art sticker shows “Forever Classics” but the listing in Amazon and on Cher.com is just “Forever.” I think the difference is one set is “Forever Classics” and the other is “Forever Fan.” You may recognize the cover art from the CR Fashion Book photo shoot with Kim Kardashian and Naomi Campbell.

Let’s start with the CD options of Forever Classics:

  • Black and white cover CD (baseline) – 21 tracks
  • Blue cover CD (Amazon exclusive) – no track list
  • Red cover CD (Cher.com) – 21 tracks

These are the vinyl options for Forever Classics:

  • Black and white cover, 2 clear vinyl (baseline)- 21 tracks
  • Blue cover, 2 blue vinyl  (Amazon exclusive) – no track list

Apparently the other version, Forever Fan, will be streaming only and include 40 songs with some deep-cut tracks: https://genius.com/albums/Cher/Forever-fan

To support the Forever Fan, Cher has rereleased her 1974 Warner Bros single “A Woman’s Story” as an online single in streaming platforms and on her YouTube channel. In fact, the singleness of it made me think this was a new song being released with possibly the same name. It’s an interesting strategy to highlight this lost song in such a public way but I’m glad Cher did so. Although it makes you wonder what a single really is in this day and age. Not only is this an old song, but hasn’t Taylor Swift made the idea of a single obsolete in the last year of every song of her album charting because it’s stream-able over and over again?

This song is later-day Phil Spector production and I think his style really gives the song an ethereal and lush lifeforce. Thanks to remastering I finally understand the line “And if it had to be tried, I tried it.” It also makes me understand Rona Barrett’s odd interview question to Cher about whether she ever sold her body for sex. Possibly Barrett had just heard this song and wondered if Cher was singing from experience.

I had heard about this very single in Cher biographies and had just gotten my drivers license in 1985 but was afraid to drive on St. Louis highways so I took back roads down to a south St. Louis county used record store where I found the 45. I was so excited, like I had struck gold; but the drive home took so long I was almost late for a dinner out with some visiting family and my mother was really pissed (this before the days of cell phones). Needless to say I had to wait later until that night to hear it. And I love to eat out so this was an odd torture for me. This was pre-Internet and I had not heard not a note of it before. I loved it and also its b-side cover of The Ronettes’ “Baby, I Love You” (not on the Forever Fan compilation). It took me decades longer to find the remaining Spector song in the trilogy, the Harry Nilsson duet which I found one day at a used record store near Kent State in Ohio while driving from St. Louis to Yonkers, New York.

Here is the song from Cher’s Youtube. Cher Universe has already made a fan video from the CR fashion book photo shoot film as a base.

There’s possibly a new tour in the works, the Hall of Fame induction in need of merch and credibility, and a memoir that needs a soundtrack. This new compilation and this new lead song might help assist all those ventures in spirit.

Cher, the Memoir – out 19 November

Which brings us to the memoir.

The Christmas Album Vinyl – 11 October

Cher’s Christmas album is also being re-released this year in a cracked blue vinyl as an Amazon exclusive. My high school friends and I used to watch Rankin & Bass and other animated Christmas specials in July for fun so I took the opportunity to do a summer listen to the Christmas album again.

The “Met Gala” Funko Pop – out any day now

My Funko Pop order was again marked as a problem. This happened last time too with the Ringmaster version. Mysteriously it just hasn’t shipped yet and the doll is now listed at a higher price ($18 instead of $12). Annoying.

 

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 7

July 30, 2024 / / 0 Comments

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

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

 

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

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

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

Cher’s Response:

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

Cher Scholar’s Response:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cher’s Response:

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

Cher Scholar’s Response:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Cher’s Response:

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

Cher Scholar’s Response:

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

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

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

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

Cher’s Response:

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

Cher Scholar’s Response:

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

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

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

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

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

 

Now we turn to the questions put to Sonny:

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

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

Sonny’s Response:

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

Cher Scholar’s Response:

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

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

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

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

Sonny’s Response:

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

Cher Scholar’s Response:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Sonny’s Response:

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

Cher Scholar’s Response:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cher with some of her exes:

 

Read more Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 6

July 22, 2024 / / 0 Comments

I was thinking this week would be another Dear Sonny & Cher, but it’s actually another solo Cher with a picture of Sonny & Cher. So technically Cher made it through four columns by herself. The final four of the ten will all be “Dear Cher…and Sonny.” So six total were with Sonny, four solo.

This is an interesting picture. It shows the mature Sonny and the doe-eyed Cher. They look like brother and younger sister here. Sonny showed some real courage to wear those polka-dots.

This was a frustrating week for me, the obvious answers for teeth and nails and always the boys. I think I’ve reached my limits on the variation of “does he like me” questions. These boys are gonna be the death of me.

 

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 to help you—right here in the pages of 16!

Dear Cher, I like this boy who lives near my house, but I’m not sure whether he likes me—or is just teasing me. It seems like all the boys tease me. I feel like they must hate me. How can I be sure just what they mean? Unsure, Mystic, Conn.

Cher’s Response:

Dear Unsure, I think you are nurturing a queen-size inferiority complex—and all over nothing. First, if a boy notices you enough to tease you, you can be almost positive that he is interested in you. Second, it is a habit of fellows, when they are hanging around together, to single out a girl or two and pick on them. All this means is that they are watching. Don’t take [it] the wrong way. Just be a little lady and don’t be afraid to smile at them occasionally—with a dash of humor in your eyes. Soon you will find that they will stop teasing and start talking to you, which is probably what they are building up to, anyway,

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Oh boy. There’s a lot to unpack in here. I even ran this one by my mother this week. We were talking about sensitivity gone amuck. Common wisdom on “picking on” as flirting is pretty strict. It’s “not okay” and practically considered abuse. Sometimes the more innocent “teasing” gets caught up in that, however, which makes flirting in this century very complicated.

As the “little lady” in a house with two older brothers I was obviously teased and this was in the 1970s so it was obviously tolerated. The issue wasn’t the teasing per se (which all four of them did). It was the not-stopping after teasing fatigue set in. I gained a reputation for being explosive when my buttons were pushed for too long. Plus, I tend to be sensitive, after all, practically emotionally fragile.

When I moved from Albuquerque to St. Louis I was also teased by the Missouri boys, (I think that was a genetic predisposition), because of my last name being Ladd, (which is why I’ve always found name puns to be low hanging fruit, comedically speaking). My mother consistently would tell me that the boys were only teasing me because they liked me. That did help take the punch out of their puns.

But where does teasing end and bullying begin? I do not know. But I do know, if the teasing crosses the line into bullying than you can f*%k that shit about being “a little lady” who smiles “with a dash of humor.” That would not be the recommended strategy today. Bullying is not funny. It’s basically the pre-stage of a fist fight.

However, teasing is not always bullying. Even though gaslighters will tell you “they’re just teasing” as they’re bullying you (ask me how I know). It’s all very complicated.

And here’s the rub. I am teaser myself. And I’ve been told I tease like a Ladd (which is not necessarily a good thing). I definitely, like those boys, wouldn’t bother to tease someone I didn’t care for. But I also wouldn’t tease someone I didn’t know very well or trust. It is definitely one of the ways I express both affection (dare I say the primary way) and a sense of feeling safe.  Which brings us to the love languages. I’m not a huge fan of the love languages because they seem to train us to accept our default (and everyone else’s) comfortable languages and I contend we should all be good(ish) at all of them. (To review the love languages are service, touch, gifts, words and time. I get it, we’re all bad at some of them, (err, or all of them). But we all needs goals, right? We certainly should have goals to love better. We all need a repertoire of thoughtfulness, conversation, experiences…and teasing.

The dialogue at the beginning of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour was designed to be marital teasing. Sometimes it got pretty barbed but the idea was that it was all in fun and games and that Sonny and Cher would go home as a happy family. That didn’t exactly turn out to be truth, but it wasn’t because of height jokes or Indian jokes or Italian jokes. It was due to much more serious fault lines around infidelity and control. Cher actually liked short Italian guys…like a lot. Her barbs were just part of the game playing and the banter was popular because everyone was getting used to seeing more “ethnic” looking people on TV making fun of each other. Then maybe racist America wouldn’t take it all so seriously either. I think the banter was doing real cultural work via the guise of teasing. Looking back it seems more mean-spirited than it did at the time.

And in the real space of a relationship between two people, teasing has a function. It is part of the suite of affections. But the world is full of misinterpretations and sensitivity; so where flirting is concerned, we probably aught to be a safe word for teasing deployments.

I’m going to pick one right now: “fluffernutter.”

Dear Cher, I am 14 years old and I have always been thin—skinny, to be honest. I feel afraid of people. I can never talk to them easily and I feel as though I want to run away and hide sometimes. Frustrated, Glen Allen, Va.

Cher’s Response:

Dear Frustrated, If I were you, I would look at the bright side of things. It is easier to gain weight than to lose it [not true], for instance. I suggest that you eat a well-balanced diet of three big meals and day, and then help yourself to between-meal snacks. You can eat pizza, popcorn and ice cream—all those groovey goodies that most teenage girls have to say “no” to. [Uh, is this a good idea?]  I would advise you to avoid chocolate, coconut, soda pop and sundaes, as these can cause acne. To overcome your intense shyness, you will just have to force yourself  out of your shell. Try talking to yourself in the mirror. Don’t laugh, I really mean it. Then try talking to two or more friends. I know it’s hard to do, but if you don’t make some kind of effort, you’ll never get anywhere. Good luck.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

What a mess. Half of us have fat thighs and half of us have toothpicks (my Dad’s word for his legs today). The very idea of the ideal is exhausting.

Metabolisms can get really screwed up with extreme diets in one direction or another. So this advice seems very dated now: pig out, basically. This could have bad unintended consequences down the line at the other extreme. Science is just now figuring out how metabolisms function and it’s kind of wacky. There’s still a lot we don’t know about food and how our body processes it. Neil DeGrasse Tyson in his Master Class talked about “frontier science” (science at the very outer edges of our knowledge and understanding) and food seems to fit into that category for me, which is why the media jumps on all the contradictory studies about common foods: eggs are good for you, eggs are bad for you, coffee is good for, coffee is you bad for you, wine is good for you… We don’t know yet fully is the thing. The weight-loss show The Biggest Loser demonstrated how much we really don’t know scientifically about weight loss and weight gain.

The Cooking with Cher cookbook is a good example of this. When this Cher’s fat-free-everything cookbook came out, fat free was the fad, accepted on faith. But as it turns out, we need some of those fats. Eating is complicated.

My friend Julie and I once hosted a A Battle of the Stars dinner party in Los Angeles with our friends: Jack Nicholson’s fat-free cookbook recipes pitted against Cher’s fat-free recipes. Cher did win in the final voting but everyone was pretty unilaterally unenthused about the goods. And that’s not surprising for diet food. Fun jobs don’t pay. Good food tries to kill you. C’est La Vie.

Michelle Obama’s new book The Light We Carry (one of the books saving my life right now) had some great advice about talking to yourself in the mirror. She tells a story about a man she knows who starts every day with a look in the mirror and a friendly, “Hey, buddy.” It’s about starting the day with something nice to say to yourself. I am trying to figure out what the girl equivalent should be. I don’t like the Barbra Streisandly “Hey gorgeous!” Too much. I want to talk to my little self, actually. With some bit of teasing, truth be told, like, “Hey there, wiseacre” or “Good morning, smarty pants!”

Sonny teased Cher about being too thin and this was probably one of the things she was actually a bit sensitive about. She said before Bob Mackie, she wasn’t even sure people realized she was a girl. Which just goes to show what the power of an outfit will do.

The great ones have like super powers I guess.

Dear Cher, I have boy trouble. I am 13 and every time I get a boy to notice me, he seems friendly at first but [then] he loses interest. How can I get a boy to keep liking me? Troubled, Pablos Verdes, Calif.

Cher’s Response:

Dear Troubled, To get a boy to keep on liking you is an age-old problem with us girls. I think you have to make something “special” of yourself [oy vey]. To be special, you should have your own flair with clothes, have an original hair style, or do something that is different (but no way-out) [god forbid]. Most girls have a tendency to “run with the herd,” and guys get bored with that type. [Is this Sonny, talking? It sounds more like Sonny in some of these.] It is the girl who tries new things, [*snicker*] who is stimulating and full of life, and who has imagination and uses it that keeps a fellow alert and interested. 

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Sigh. So what is the recipe again? Be stimulating, full-of-life, not boring, imaginative but not “way-out.” Good grief. No, bad grief. This is an age-old story. It’s called Scheherazade.

You know what? This is the right answer (and I’m not disagreeing with Cher here; she came to this answer eventually): girls don’t need boys. That’s the answer. Stop all the “does he like me if he teases me” or “does he like me if names his car after me” or does he like me if I do A,B,C,D,E,F….

I’m getting bored with the bored boys, to be honest with you.

Let me tell you a story. I once worked at a Mortgage Company in St. Louis. My job all day was to make legal-sized photocopies and send faxes to the corporate office in Minnesota. I did so much faxing I started to dream about it. In the dream I had trouble flipping over the double-sided legal paper correctly. (I hate work dreams.) Anyway, there were two women there I completely misjudged. One was a very cool, beautiful curly-haired brunette woman who I thought would never want to be friends with a boring person like me. But she invited me to dog sit for her and we went to concerts together (the best one being Steely Dan) and she became the only friend I maintained out of that job.

The other woman was a very tiny, trad-wife looking woman. Or trad-fiancé anyway. Just the way she dressed, talked and did her hair. She was at that time planning her upcoming wedding and it was all she was talking about. I thought, she’s just waiting for her “real” life to begin. I wasn’t dismissive so much as I considered her an alien property. I was only 22 or 23 at the time. Little did I know she was over 30, (all the girls in that office were over 30, the cool, beautiful girl, the getting-married girl, the girl training so hard to get into the FBI she passed out one day by the fax machine).

We had an amazing boss there. He was a Baptist minister. And I told my first joke in that office. I remember it like it was yesterday. I sat next to the boss and we had an open office plan. There was a light flickering above us and we could see a bug up there dying in the light fixture. I said, “Well, I guess you can say he’s finally seen the light.” The whole office starting laughing and not because the joke was any good but because quiet-Mary actually told a joke. I turned beet-red and became committed to doing more of that.

Anyway, after a few months I got to know the not-so-trad-wife girl as I delivered copies to her desk by the window. She asked me if I had a boyfriend and I said no. I was just moving into my first apartment. She said, “Good. Live on your own for as long as you can. You will discover who you are, learn how to stand on your own two feet and then you will never feel trapped by a bad relationship.”

I thought, “That’s f*%king brilliant!” She wasn’t a trad-wife at all. She turned out to be a god-damn love guru.

Cher has said as much. Boys are fabulous but you don’t need one to live.

I don’t want to live in a world without boys. I want to be friends with boys. Relationships with boys are important and exciting and fulfilling. But if all the boys in the world find me boring or unimaginative or unstimulating, I will survive it.

Dear Cher, I have trouble with my hair, my face, and—worse—I have buck teeth. Please don’t laugh. I really want to know what to do. I am 11 years old. Carol, Atwater, Col.

Cher’s Response:

Dear Carol, you must never think for one minute that I would laugh at you or anyone with a problem. I was young once [like two days ago], too, and I know how very serious all these problems are. I only hope that I can help you and any other 16-ers who write to me in some small way. I think it would serve you well to order 16’s Beauty and Popularity Book, as you did not spell out your problems in any detail and the Beauty Book covers all problems, from shyness to skin and hair care. Buck teeth can only be treated by a dentist (who will probably send you to a good orthodontist). I advise you to get your parents to take you to the dentist at once, as you are still young enough to get the braces that will cure your buck teeth problem forever.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

I had braces too. I was thinking the transformation was going to be bigger than it was after that year of mouth metal. Like I would have magic new teeth basically.  But I pretty much looked the same. I had the same teeth. I didn’t suddenly have Farrah Fawcett face.

I wish I could get a copy of this 16  guide book to beauty. I still can’t find it. But I did find an ad for it. Yikes!

And I found the next best thing: Susan Dey’s Secrets on Boys, Beauty and Popularity.  I can’t wait to read this. The answer is out there about beauty and boys, folks. This is just more “frontier science.”

Cher’s mother did not have the money to fix Cher’s teeth. And Cher didn’t get braces until she was in her late-30s, somewhere between the movies Silkwood and The Witches of Eastwick. In some ways, her straightened teeth completely changed the look of her mouth. The fist time I saw Cher’s new mouth was in the movie The Witches of Eastwick. I had cognitive dissonance watching the first outdoor lunch scene where Alexandra Medford meets Daryl Van Horne in the beginning of the movie.

Maybe if you’ve got a magic smile you shouldn’t fuss with it. More “frontier science” right there.

(Click to enlarge)

Dear Cher, How can I stop biting my nails? They are a mess. I want to hide my hands when I go out on a date. Please help me. Nails, Ft. Lee, N.J.

Cher’s Response:

Dear Nails, First try to get a “substitute” habit. In other words, every time you want to bite your nails grab a piece of gum or a Life Saver—or twist a piece of your hair. Next, run lanolin (it’s cheap at the drug store) in your hands and massage your finger-tips each night (this is to keep your cuticles soft). Every time you feel like “biting in,” stop and  say, “That’s silly. I’ll find something better to do with my hands”—and do it.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

The old “substitute habit” theory. I don’t think that works. I think that’s just regular ole science. Besides, twisting your hair could be just as annoying for everyone else to have to watch. How about this, the next time you want to bite your nails, smoke a cigarette instead. See? And soon we’ll have to start ranking and color-coding all the bad habits and it will be a mess. Mo habits, mo problems.

I either have the best nails or the worst nails. It’s called life balance, people. Sheesh. My grandmother always has glamourous nails and sometimes having my grandmother’s long fingers with her glamourous nails can feel like Dumbo’s feather, but sometimes I feel like nails should get a breath of fresh air or I’ll be taking a ceramics class and fingernails wreak havoc when you’re doing pottery.

Cher, too, has gone through nail phases. Her most famous nail phase was in the 1970s when she popularized the crazy-long talons. She was so infamous for her long nails that there are stories about her bringing recording sessions to a halt if she needed a nail repair.

But then she went to a more natural look when she started acting in movies because well, of course, serious actors need to have serious nails. It makes total sense.

She has recently started wearing longer nails again but with less color.

(Click to enlarge)

Biting your nails is probably one of the better bad habits, all things considered. I mean they keep growing back so…live a little.

 

Read more Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 5

July 16, 2024 / / 0 Comments

What a picture this week! Cher is wearing some future-Cher-signature hoop earrings. She was literally before her own time, not just everybody else’s time. This is also classic 60s-Cher with the thick eyeliner and the neutral lips, the thick bangs. She looks slightly miffed, like kids are writing to her via 16 Magazine and they are not telling her how old they were. (Can you believe it?)

This also marks the last solo effort of this column. From now on, Sonny will weigh in on questions, too. Maybe his new movie-mogul schedule has freed up. Who knows. The bottom line is Cher only got through three of them by herself.

 

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 to help you—right here in the pages of 16!

Dear Cher, Do you think it is wrong for a girl to try and make herself look like another girl? For instance, I think you are beautiful and I model my hair, clothes and looks after you. Who would I try to look like? I flip for John Lennon. Worried, Niagara Falls, Ont.

Cher’s Response:

Dear Worried, Since you didn’t say how old you are, it is hard to give you advice. You 16-ers must remember to state your age when you writer to me—as that does make a difference. If you are 14 or younger, I think it is quite a good thing to choose another girl whom you admire to model yourself after. However, as you get older, you should start discovering yourself. You should—sooner or later—get your own style. That’s like letting the real you emerge. Everybody starts by copying, but in the end they must come to themselves. I agree with you that John Lennon is quite flippy.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

From Canada. She’s getting international letters now! I think this is a very good response, except for the scoldy you-16-ers part…and the part about John Lennon being flippy. I don’t agree with them on that one and the comment itself seems aside from the question. Just a non-sequitur. Maybe it was a hey, girl-to-girl thing, look at that hottie John Lennon. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

Truth be told, I don’t find any of the Beatles “flippy” or handsome and I know this will piss off millions of Boomer ladies by saying that. I have always struggled with the mandatory exercise of “picking my Beatle” and I have defaulted to Paul just because he and his wife Linda sided with the animals and Linda had a line of TV-dinners taste-tested in St. Louis. The dinners didn’t ever “go” but it was back when there were no vegetarian TV dinners in grocery stores and, incidentally, they were very tasty and so I also have her cookbook. You could argue I’m more of a Linda McCartney fan. But I do like the Beatles themselves. It’s more of a problem of picking a cute one. (And Cher Scholar’s gonna drop some catty bits here).  I contend that there is a fatal flaw in each of the Beatle faces. I had these thoughts watching the excellent Get Back documentary. For Ringo, yes, unfortunately it is the nose. For Paul, it’s those droopy eyes that most Boomer girls did indeed flip for. George Harrison has the most classically handsome face, but I can’t get past those teeth. For John Lennon, the eyes, nose and teeth are fine. It’s his mouth.

That all is needlessly (and maybe inappropriately) said because quantifying beauty is very subjective and cultural. For example. I love Cher’s older crooked teeth. I don’t like George Harrison’s crooked teeth. Probably sentimentality plays into our evaluations more than we like to admit. I have no sentimental attachment to the Beatles so I can nit-pick away. Maybe if I was an older person, I would have joined my peers and “flipped.” As it was, I was born later and flipped (and floundered) for people in my 1980s-teen-era instead. (However, I did not pick a Duran Duran member either. Sigh. Okay, maybe it’s me.)

And how are all these I-want-to-look-like-you Cher questions coming through the slush pile anyway? Is that the bulk of the mail coming in? Are they choosing only questions that discuss Cher beauty or Cher hair? Which is an interesting marketing strategy to pick only those questions that made Cher look good (but look at me being all conspiracy theory right now).

I am fascinated by these changing age borderlines in the 16 Magazine responses. Like was some teen-psychologist being consulted? Age 14 seems like the fulcrum of many changes in one’s life. Boys getting more sensible with girls, girls coming into their “real you-ness.” The real Eunice, as it were. How can I get to my real Eunice?

I actually love the idea that you begin to discover your own look by copying others and then making small tweaks away from that copy, so many tweaks that eventually you won’t recognize the source. I would love to hear (or read) about Cher’s childhood models, what and from whom she copied to finally define her Cherness, her Eunice. And I think this practice applies to probably everything we do as creative people or thinkers. We model other things until we understand the thing fair enough to try out tweaks for ourselves. There’s some great quote out there about artists who become great because they fail at trying to be someone else.

I was 15 or 16 when the Cher movie Mask came out. But since I was a slow kid, let’s just say I had the maturity of a 14-year old and that’s being generous. Watching the movie in the theaters I remember thinking Cher looked so great and that of all the eras of Cher, this look seemed somewhat copy-able for a girl from Missouri. You know, a sprinkle of hillbilly in there? Her 1960s-hippy chic look: eh. The glamourous TV star look: not do-able. Biker chick: possibly. Looking back it seems folly but I did try it out. And the form it took was to copy her character’s white undershirts and ribbon/shoestring necklaces. The shirts didn’t work immediately. But I did wear those shoestring necklaces all through my Sophomore year until I decided, you know, I’m not really a choker-necklace person.

Dear Cher, I have very dark, coarse hair on my forearms and on my face. Do you have any suggestion as to how I could get rid of this unwanted hair? Hairy, Ft. Collins, Col. 

Cher’s Response:

Dear Hairy, YOU FORGOT TO GIVE YOUR AGE!! If you are under 16, I advise you to try to ignore this excess hair for the time being. It may just be a passing thing and soon gradually begin to disappear. But if you are over 16, it is probably going to be a permanent problem, and you should speak to your family doctor about recommending a good electrolysist. There are people who scientifically remove hairs permanently—one at a time. Do not use “hair removing” creams and plasters on your body or face, as it is very dangerous.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

First of all, THE YELLING!! Maybe 16 Magazine needs a form kids can fill out to send in with their letter. That would eliminate all the forgetting to tell Cher what age you are. I now feel compelled by these stern reprimands to give my age when I have a question for anyone. “I’m 55!” That’s got to be the boundary of some kind of life cycle change, right? Wait a minute. Maybe Cher should start an AARP advice column right now! “Dear Cher, I’m 55 and not yet having hot flashes like all my friends? Am I a freak of nature. I feel so left out. What should I do?”

And I notice the age boundary has moved to 16 in this case. I hope there’s a chart somewhere of all these teen thresholds. Or is 16 just the age when girls can start going through draconian beauty practices? Boys can get drafted into the military at 18; girls can start electrolysis at 16?

There is some intense social pressure to be hairless, oddly. As a race, human animals are turning into hairless cats. I personally like hair on people, cats and dogs. And I know some very beautiful girls with hairy arms. In the third grade, a girl named Laura moved to our neighborhood from somewhere in the south. She sat next to me and we became friends for a year. All the boys went nuts. She was very pretty and had a southern accent. And hairy arms. The boys did not care. She was the most popular girl that year.

It’s interesting that this response differentiates between removing hair scientifically as opposed to what? Magically? I think they mean these snake-oil type remedies. You know, the whole skin care industry basically. I have a love-hate relationship with skin care products and I wrote about this extensively in Cher Zine 3, “Cher and Your Skin (The Infomercials).”

Hair removal has come along way (err, scientifically) since the 1960s. Just look at this Wikipedia page with its hilarious drawings of human hair and old-tyme ads for hair removal. There is now sugaring, threading, drugs, laser, IPL, diode epilation.

One thing is for certain, people care an awful lot about their hair. It’s a very serious business. Do I have too much? Not enough? One good thing about hair is that you can play with it.

Dear Cher, My father is in the Army and we lived in Europe for five years until about five months ago.  Before I left, all of my friends told me they would write to me. I have written to them all and given them my new address, and not a single one has responded. What is wrong with me—or with them? Now that I have gone, have they forgotten me? Depressed, Ft. Ord. Calif.

Cher’s Response:

Dear Depressed, Nothing is wrong with you or them—except that you are all human beings acting in a very human way. You remembered to write and [were] anxious to hear from them. In fact, it was probably easier for you to spend a lot of time writing to your old friends, rather than make new ones. They, however, still have each other, and are not lonely—though I am sure they miss you and speak of you often (and also feel guilty about not writing). But you should also remember that writing a letter is hard for your former friends, as they are all caught up in the busy life they share. That doesn’t mean they think ill of you. Don’t be such a pessimist. Go out and get some new buddies and start all over. When you remember the past, think only of the good things and—if you feel so inclined—if you feel so inclined—just drop your old friends a happy little picture postcard from time to time,. You’ll make out all right—you’ll see.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Europeans!

I was a big nerd and also in French class so I had a lot of international pen pans in high school. The two pals who petered out first were the boy from Germany and the boy from France. I really don’t think this is because they were Europeans. I think this is because (can we all agree?) they were boys. My best pen pals were from New Mexico (Maureen I had as a pen pal the longest, through my twenties, and yet have never met her, even though I lived in the small city of Santa Fe for three years where she was from and probably still living), the French-Canadian (who wrote to me in French and I returned letters to her in English) and the girl from the Philippines (who wrote to me until the Marcos were deposed and then I never heard from her again). So it’s situational is what I’m saying.

I guess I’m pretty hot-headed because I didn’t spend much time making additional attempts after one went unanswered. So for this question I went to one of my bffs, Julie, to get advice. She has a remarkable reputation among our group for doing something we call “never forcing a falling out.” You know, sometimes you get fed up with a friend and you “force a falling out.” You instigate trouble to cull that friend from your herd. This may be a catty girl thing to do but we would often find Julie in a situation where “forcing a falling out” would seem beneficial and we would recommend she do it and she would never do it. Admirable really. So I told her this scenario and she texted me back: “I wouldn’t send more than two unanswered letters unless this was a really long-time relationship, then maybe three or four. And I would probably try calling if it was a long-term relationship before accepting being ghosted.” We then discussed the word ghosting and me using it here in this anachronistic scenario and we decided it was a very useful term. Because ghosting was happening long before “ghosted” was a word. To be clear, ghosting is not nice. To force a falling out is, although still dysfunctional, somewhat nicer. At least the victim has closure.

I do like the idea of converting to postcards as a way to touch base without the pressure of a response. “Remember me? I’m in America now doing obnoxious American things! Thbbbbffttt!” Then again, I can see where that wouldn’t help things much.

There’s probably not much hope in this sort of situation and I see Cher now giving me the stern Cher-stare and saying, “Cher Scholar, don’t be such a pessimist!”

Dear Cher, I have fat thighs. I am not tall, so it really shows on me. I am 14 years old. [Thank God she said how old she was!] What should I do? Out Of Shape, Bossier City, La.

Cher’s Response:

Be glad you are 14—for that means that some of this weight is still “baby fat” and it will slowly disappear in the next couple of years. However, I think you should practice rolling around on the floor. [Is this code for sex?] What you do is recline on the floor propped up by your arms with your elbows straight. Point your toes and stiffen your leg muscles. Now slowing roll over to the right as far as you can. Hold it for a moment, and then slowly roll all the way back to your left. Repeat this 25 times a day, and within two weeks your measurements will be on the way down.

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Roll around on the floor?? There’s not a better, more “scientific” name for this exercise? Ok, I’m gonna try it. Hold on a minute…

Okay I don’t think I did this right because it seemed more of a workout for my arms than my thighs, which were also chubby as kid. I have a distinct memory of being in my Wonder Woman swimsuit down at our neighborhood pool where Lillian, Diana and I would yell “Laugh at Me,” (after Sonny’s solo opus, no kidding and no idea why), and then jumping into the pool and grabbing at each other underwater and then Lillian coming up to tell me she found my legs chubby. And I wasn’t mad about it but I do remember being a bit irritated, thinking “Oh great, now I have to worry about my legs.”

Those chubby legs turned into tween-anorexic skinny legs (you saw that coming) and then I had a decade in my late-teens and twenties with normal legs and now we’re back to elderly chubby legs again.

I just did a google search that made me feel a bit fat- shamey: “best workout for fat thighs.” I got the usual suspects: lunges, squats, dead lifts with weights and jumping jacks (which are hard on your knees…just ask Jane Fonda).

Cher obviously couldn’t have thrown this out in the mid-1960s but there will come a time in the 1990s when Cher would turn into somewhat of a fitness guru. So we have quite a suite of workouts, guides and encouragements to suggest now.

Cher’s VHS A New Attitude, a step workout, was released in 1991. Body Confidence was released in 1992 with weight band exercises and a hot dance. When these came out, I just watched them while eating ice cream. I was thin then and the devil may care. Years ago I actually bought a step and tried the workouts. They were good and hard. The most distracting thing about them is the fact Cher is really overdressed in them. And that is kind of a turn off somehow. She does honestly struggle through her own workouts sometimes and that is refreshing. But to show up dressed for singing “Turn Back Time” is not motivating for those of us who do not have Turn-Back-Time-fits or care to.

In 1991, Cher also came out with a nutrition and fitness book, co-authored by nutritionist Robert Haas (who wrote Eat to Win), not to be confused with the poet Robert Hass (who wrote “The Nineteenth Century as a Song“).

Cher also did a series of commercials for Jack LaLanne gyms from 1984 to 1989. You can get some inspiration for your fat thighs here by listening to some memorable Cher epigrams about sweating:

 

Read more Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 4

July 7, 2024 / / 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.

Read more Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine

Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 3

June 29, 2024 / / 0 Comments

We’re back again with more advice from 16 Magazine. But next up is some solo “Dear Cher” responses. From what Cher (or the 16 Magazine staff dude pretending to be Cher) says, this must be the first installment of the column. Plus there’s such a long preamble.

Did Cher start this solo and Sonny joined her later? As often happened in the Sonny & Cher story, Cher might have started off alone and then beseeched Sonny to help her out, like when she talked him into doing the final variety series or when she couldn’t talk on the “Hello” 45 record and Sonny had to do it all or when Sonny did all the talking to the live and studio audiences or when he tried to get Cher singing in the first place.

Anyway, hang on because this is going to be a long, repetitive and somewhat laborious introduction.

 

“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!

[Jesus! That sounds so dire. Don’t suffer alone!]

Hi there! It’s me—Cher—and (like I told you in the last issue of 16) I have what I hope will be a groovey [sic, or maybe that’s really how they spelled it back then] surprise for you? I know it is for me. What it is, is this; beginning with this issue I am starting a column called Dear Cher right here in 16 Magazine. It will be a regular feature in which I will try to answer any of your questions concerning make-up, beauty, hair and self-improvement. I will also help you with your personal problems—[good lord, if only]—you know, like how to overcome bashfulness, how to get that special guy to notice you, how to get along with your parents and brothers and sisters (not to mention with your teachers), how to get a boy to keep on liking you once you’ve got him interested, what to do about those “moods” you fall into, etc.”

[So the target audience for this at the beginning was young girls, not boys. So much for their problems. Interesting we’ve already seen that some boys did write in.]

“In other words, I—Cher—promise you that I will do all I can to help and guide you in every way possible in your day-to-day life. I’ve just emerged from my early teens and I know what unhappiness and suffering a young girl often goes through—and all too often has to go through alone. Well, you aren’t alone anymore. I am here. You can count on me and I will not fail you.”

[Some big and wide-ranging promises are being made here. Oy vey.]

“So if you have a problem—whether it’s a boy who’s causing you a heartache or a hair-do that is giving you headache, you can turn to me. Don’t be shy. I am the only one who will see your letters, as signed by you, and you know you can trust me. [Somehow, I’m doubting this. Whenever someone says “trust me”…and you know what, I think Sonny & Cher taught me that]. Tell me what your troubles and problems are—and then look each month for my answer, just for you, right here in the pages of 16. Since most of your letters will be of a very personal natures, I will not print your name. Be sure to remember to put a code name of your selection at the end of your letters to me. I will use this code name when I print your letter and my answer in 16—so watch for it.

Meanwhile, since I have some extra space in this issue [despite a herculean attempt to preamble this to death], I am going to take care of a couple of letters that came to me recently in my general mail. They will give you an idea of how I will write this column.”

[Ugh! I’m exhausted now. If only we could take a nap. No, let’s forge ahead.]

Dear Cher, When I look at a picture of you, I just flip. You look so beautiful—your eyes are sparkling and your hair is long and shining. Then I look into the mirror and I just hate myself. Please, please tell me how I can get to look like you! Miserable

Cher’s Response:

Dear Miserable, I am glad you like the way I look, believe me—but in doing so you are overlooking a most important fact. I am me and you are you! I am quite sure you are just as pretty (if not prettier) than I am, in your own way. So forget about me and let’s concentrate on you. To have sparkling eyes, you must get enough sleep, keep your face and eyes clean, and perhaps wear a little make-up [that word has unhyphenated itself in the last 40 years… isn’t that interesting?]. A thin eye-liner line on your upper lid and a little mascara may just do the trick. [Is that ironic advice from the woman who, along with Liz Taylor, gave the thick eye-liner look traction in the mid-1960s?] Give it a try. Be sure your eyes aren’t dull because you need glasses. Don’t laugh [too late]—that is sometimes the case! You can keep your hair shining by washing and brushing it regularly. If you want it long, then let it grow. [Is there another way?] Long hair takes extra brushing, so be sure that you have the time required to take care of it. If you do these things, you will begin to discover your own hidden beauty, and soon you will find yourself liking that little girl you see in the mirror!

Cher Scholar’s Response:

If you do these things, you will begin to discover your own hidden beauty…for like 24 hours only and then you will forget about it again and will have to discover new eye-liner tricks and spend some $$ on beauty books and magazines and the latest, most scientifically-improved (or mystical) makeup and then write to more advice columns run by other celebrities and influencers and do you see the problem with this right here?

I’m not an expert on this but I am always most impressed by those women who present beyond their face, so to speak. I just saw an example of this last night on a Diane Von Furstenberg documentary. She’s indisputably beautiful but she presents in a way that indicates she’s not operating from an investment in her own beautiful face. Oh sure, you say, easy enough to tap into your inner beauty when you’ve got outer beauty! Ok, fair enough. You can also see this same phenomenon in certain women who are not considered stylishly beautiful. (Look behind you 200 years to see how trends influence what we think ‘beautiful’ is.) These women are tapping into some kind of arresting self-assurance and inner light. I can think of a few women right now who do it. You think they’re beautiful and then you say, well, they’re not conventionally beautiful but they’re pulling off something that’s very lovely and stunning.

I couldn’t tell you how to get there, but I’m pretty sure it’s not by using a tube of makeup or hair coloring.

As a tween and teen, I did all the things. I read all the library books and paperback books I could find on beauty by the likes of Revlon or Raquel Welch or Christie Brinkley. I did all the hair and face things. I did aerobics religiously. I didn’t spend a single day in high school without my finger nails painted. It seems ridiculous to me now. I mean it’s fun to paint your fingernails. It really is. I still do it. But to feel you have to do it every day is a problem. Because it doesn’t really matter. And I didn’t even need to compare myself to famous women. I had a charismatic, elegant comparison in my own house, my grandmother. To tell you what kind of an “influencer” she was, you just have to meet all the Katharines in my family named after her. I would never measure up, I was sure of it. She was the thinnest, most effortlessly glamourous person and more interesting than any woman on TV; and by the way, her fingernails were painted every single day. The only time I saw her without her nails painted was when she was in the hospital and it was shocking.  I never for one second thought I could pull of a Cher. That never even occurred to me as do-able.  But at least I had the genetics of my grandmother. That seemed somehow do-able. And I went to great and dangerous lengths trying to do it.

I’m probably closer than I’ve ever been to understanding the charisma of my grandmother (because I’m nearing the age she was when I knew her and have had a lifetime to understand her possible struggles and feelings) and still I only paint my nails once in a while. It was never about the fingernails.

There’s a back door into this idea of beauty, is what I think I am trying to say. It’s not a front door. The paint job is only the front door.  And if you find you don’t have time to brush your long hair, “trust me” you will survive.

We lose ground in constant comparisons. They are irrelevant. Celebrity culture makes this  worse. Advertising makes this worse. You have to shut all that down. While you’re comparing yourself to Cher, she was comparing herself to someone else impossible for her to emulate (and that was Audrey Hepburn). It’s a dead end.

Since the mid-60s I have no doubt Cher has received thousands of fan letters telling her how beautiful she is. The letters probably increased significantly in the 1970s when she was a TV glamour goddess and the most photographed woman in America, if not the world.  More photographed than Diane Von Furstenberg even!

Fast-forward to the set of Silkwood with Meryl Streep and Mike Nichols in the early 1980s. I have a friend from High School and we were talking recently about Elaine Mae and Mike Nichols and so she sent me an excerpt she had on Silkwood from a Mike Nichols’ biography. I just read it last night. Here’s the relevant part:

“[Nichols] told Cher that he didn’t want her character to wear makeup. She was so nervous she wept—’I am so convincingly ugly,’ she said.”

Whaaaat? The makeup story is a famous Cher-Silkwood story but I had never heard that quote before and it just kills me! Cher was still beautiful in Silkwood! As I said in Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine, Part 1, we’re not always the best judges of ourselves (for good or bad).

Dear Cher, Nobody loves me. I know it sounds unbelievable, but it happens to be true. I am 13 and quiet and sort of bashful. When I try to talk to people, I stammer; and when people talk to me, I blush. My life is so unhappy. Is there anything you can do to help me? Scared

Cher’s Response:

Dear Scared, Don’t worry so much—you’re not alone in this terrible predicament. Guess what? I went through exactly the same phase when I was your age [which, let’s be honest, was six years ago]. I guess it is just a part of those awful growing pains. I think it would help you if you would try to find one good girl friend. It’s harder to get to know a group than just one individual. There must be one girl who seems a bit friendly towards you. Don’t hold back with her. Do something like asking her for help on a homework problem, or about how she gets her hair to go a certain way. Show an interest in her—and in others. If you can manage to compliment people in a sincere way—and there is something good to compliment in everyone—well, they can’t help but get to like you. Don’t be afraid of speaking to yourself in the mirror—out loud, I mean. I don’t care if it is just counting to ten, it will help you to get over the habit of not every uttering a word, and it will be a sure cure for your stammer. You don’t have to be a tiger, hon—but try to be just a bit of a ‘tigress.’ Good luck.’

Cher Scholar’s Response:

Tiger? Wha? Have we moved on to the bedroom? I’m confused.

Okay, compliments. Those are good, always appreciated. But you can go too far with compliments and you can actually get into trouble if you over-compliment or complement on a trigger subject. So stick to sincere feelings and strategically deploy it. Don’t blanket complement. Don’t complement to change the subject or as a diversion of any kind. Because then, your whole complementing apparatus becomes suspect and you’re right back to where you started.

My friend Christopher taught me a good lesson in conversation skills. I took him once to an art gallery in Taos, New Mexico, and he spent an hour chatting with the proprietor. We didn’t have time for anything else. But I was amazed he could do this for such a long time with a stranger.  He later said you can get anyone talking just by being curious and asking them questions and then seeing where that goes. People love to talk about themselves. And if you’re genuinely interested, you can play it as it lays. Be in the moment. Follow the threads.

Chats with the mirror aren’t a bad idea either. Inner dialogue. Get to know your self.

Cher has always said she is very shy and was once paralyzingly shy. She’s said she was even too shy sometimes to sing in front of just Sonny.

Possibly she’s an introvert, too, and you can’t turn an introvert into an extrovert. Their brains are actually wired differently. But you can learn how to communicate more effectively with others. And if you can learn some of these things at 13, you will not have to undo a lifetime of bad habits so good for you.

Cher was an early fan of the movie Dumbo. And like Dumbo, she had a feather to get her through anxious moments. This feather’s name was Sonny.

When I was a tween, I had to set myself a goal. I had a girl gang in Albuquerque. We did things like steal lawn ornaments and write FUCK on the sidewalks with chalky New Mexican rocks. I was on track to become a real problem child until we moved to St. Louis and I feel in with the wrong crowd, a group of nerdy bookworms. But it took some work.

My biggest problem was also bashfulness. Mine took the form of being terrified to express an opinion. Because I knew I would be judged for having an incorrect one. I was at my friend Jayne’s house one morning after a sleepover. She was asking me which box of breakfast cereal I wanted to eat from their pantry of many cereals and I was like, “Uhhhh…which one do you want?” and she lost her shit. “Like just pick a goddamn cereal already so we can eat breakfast.”

I decided right then that I would have one opinion a day. (Sigh. True story.) I even practiced having one opinion a day with my other friends Lillian and Diana. They’d be on there way over to my house and I would think, “Ok, get ready to have an opinion.”

And I started having opinions and it worked out really well and now I have too many.

Read more Dear Sonny & Cher from 16 Magazine

 

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