How John Hughes Helped Us Feel Beautiful
Growing up, Some Kind of Wonderful was my absolute fave flick. I had a crush on Keith, a girl crush on Miss Amanda Jones and wanted nothing more than for an underrated babe like Eric Stoltz to pick me up in a limo, take me to dinner and a wild house party and then give me diamond earrings in an abandoned amphitheater.
I also lovedlovedloved Watts. She was a total tomboy, played drums and marched to the beat of her own drummer. She rocked those awesome red leather fringed fingerless gloves. She had the balls to cut her hair super short and tell Keith exactly what he needed to be told. Oh, and that toe-curling practice kiss!
You’d think that, as an impressionable young teen, I’d want to be more like Lea Thomspon’s character - Amanda was the hot, popular redhead who everyone wanted to date. But Mary Stuart Masterson’s Watts was who I, in retrospect, realize was the ultimate heroine. She defied convention, was tar, tough and sassy. Watts didn’t care that tight jeans and lipstick were what drew the guys in (I mean, she knew it – remember the shower scene where she self-consciously watched the babes with boobs shower in the high school locker room? – but in the end, she stayed true to herself. And her reward? She got the guy!
John Hughes, who directed SKOW, passed away on August 6. The prolific filmmaker (who went to high school with my mom!) brought us the majority of our most cherished, iconic, pop-culture-infused 80’s movies, many of which featured main female characters who were unconventionally beautiful. Sure, there were the obvious stunners – Amanda in SKOW, Sloane in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Lisa in Weird Science. But Hughes also created parts for more understated beauties, and in the process, he instilled in us a value and appreciation for the road less travelled when it comes to babes on film.
Like Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles. She was awkward and self-conscious and Jake Ryan didn’t even know she was alive (OMG!!), but in the end, he left his curvy, luscious cheerleader girlfriend for our favorite redhead.
In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Jennifer Grey was cast as Ferris’ older sister, a bitch-on-wheels with a big schnoz who ultimately wound up saving the day AND landing the hot juvenile delinquent stud from the jailhouse.
Ally Sheedy in Breakfast Club may have been a few sandwiches short of a picnic, but she was still dark and mysterious. (True, she wound up getting a makeover in the end by Molly Ringwald – who here played the popular girl – and, newly pretty, nabbing the jock’s attention, not the best of messages to send to female viewers. But still, better to have picked a quiet beauty for the role and give her a positive outcome than to have cast someone far freakier and make it seems like all “ugly” girls wind up sad and alone.)
Bottom line, John Hughes was a massively talented artist who touched us all with his brilliant writing and laser-sharp take on pop culture, and I want to thank him for helping us girls who may not have been captains of the pom pom squad feel beautiful. He highlighted women whose quirks and traits might not have screamed, “Worship me!” but, at the end of the story, whispered, “I am just like you.”
