Clueless: Good Girls Finish Last

Clueless, starring Alicia Silverstone, has been one of my all-time favorite movies for over twenty years now. In 1995, this movie came to theaters the summer I had graduated from high school. I think I saw this movie at least three times while it was still showing at the theater. Even to this day at the age of 40, I still relate to Cher (Alicia Silverstone) and her views about guys and relationships. I just don’t (and never did) have her sense of fashion, but I almost always had my standards. One thing about being a “good girl” with standards is that we (the fictional Cher and the real me) tend to finish last when it comes to love. Throughout the movie, many people in Cher’s life were already paired up, but that did not stop Cher from having standards and setting boundaries. While she may have been extremely picky about the way a guy looks, at least she was not going to settle for just any guy who paid attention to her (even her male friend, Elton) and she refused to give away her virginity.

While looks should not be the most important thing in a relationship, they happen to be the first thing we notice about others. Here’s Cher’s take on guys and fashion:

So okay, I don't want to be a traitor to my generation and all but I don't get how guys dress today. I mean, come on, it looks like they just fell out of bed and put on some baggy pants and take their greasy hair - ew - and cover it up with a backwards cap and like, we're expected to swoon? I don't think so.

Just like Cher, I never got the whole trend with baggy pants. Thankfully, the guys my age don’t wear their clothes that way. However, I am a stickler for good hygiene. During my junior year, a guy with horrible hygiene asked me out. He was sort of a mutual friend of other friends and I preferred to keep things platonic so I said no. Okay, that part may have been true, but if he had had better hygiene and was not into devil worshipping then I might have said yes. Probably not, because I was still hung up on a crush from two years earlier and even though it seemed like a long shot of anything ever happening with him (the crush), I still held out hope for him. What a waste!

Maybe to this day, I might be somewhat picky as to how men around my age dress. Instead of the hideously baggy pants of the 1990’s, my fashion peeve with men is skinny jeans. Looking back on some of the guys I had crushes on during my adult years (I never thought I would have crushes once I became an adult), I cannot believe how I pined over a guy who now wears skinny jeans. For crying out loud, he is in his mid-thirties with a stocky build and skinny jeans just do not look appealing on him. Now I am so grateful that I did not end up with this guy. Not only because of his terrible fashion sense, but also other things as well.

Like Cher, I happened to be picky about guys in other ways. Though I was not a church-going girl during my teenage years, I had a goody-goody image because I refused to sleep with any guy before marriage.

“You see how picky I am about my shoes and they only go on my feet,” Cher tells Dion and Tai.

“Cher’s saving herself for Luke Perry,” Dionne clarifies Cher’s shoe metaphor to Tai.

Back in high school, I jokingly said I was saving myself for Brad Pitt, the hottest celebrity back then. Yep, both Cher and I held high standards and I was so thankful that the main character in a teenage chick flick was not ashamed to admit she had standards and boundaries when it came to relationships. She was still popular. Maybe because she was wealthy and had a trendy wardrobe. As for me, I got teased for being a virgin and guys did not want to go out with me. As an adult, it still seems that way. But, that’s for another story.

Here's where the cluelessness of teenage romance comes into the movie:

“If I’m too good for him, then how come I’m not with him?” Tai wonders when Cher tells her that Elton is not interested in her. Instead Elton is interested in Cher, who does not reciprocate his feelings. Tai also wonders if her hips are too big. Oftentimes, I have wondered why a certain guy was not interested in me. So far, I don’t have the answer to that one and I do not want to know why. Maybe, I don’t want to hear that they did not find me attractive enough or I am too tall for them. Usually when I have been interested in a guy, they never know about it because I keep it secret. I think they are the ones who should pursue me. Well, not long ago I took a risk and told a guy that I was interested in him. He said he was “too busy to date” and I took his word for it being that he held down a demanding job. Yet, he told me that if we saw each other again (at a place where we both frequent) he might take me out afterwards. While I was not sure when we would run into each other again, I stupidly held out hope. I was not necessarily hoping to marry him; I just wanted to get to know him better and see where things went. Still at 40, I can be just as clueless when it comes to men as I was with teenage boys back in my youth.

As I had recently watched Clueless for the umpteenth time, I still relate to Cher’s woes about romance:

Everything I think and everything I do is wrong. I was wrong about Elton, I was wrong about Christian, and now Josh hated me. It all boiled down to one inevitable conclusion, I was just totally clueless.

Yep, I had held onto false hope when it came to guys just as Cher had hoped that Elton liked her friend Tai. She also hoped that Christian (the handsome new boy in school and a dead ringer for the late James Dean) was into her romantically, and now she realized she had feelings for Josh (her college-aged, ex-stepbrother). Back in my younger days, I had strongly hoped and stupidly believed that the object of my fantasies liked me back even though he had rejected me before. Throughout my post-divorce years, there were several men I had hoped were interested in me but nothing worked out. As for now, I refuse to be clueless when it comes to men. I just have to keep putting myself out there and learn to figure out the male species. I am done holding on to false hope that maybe this one or that one will like me and I don’t have to do anything to get his attention.

Here’s why I subtitled this post Good Girls Finish Last:

While nearly everyone around Cher is paired up, she does not get her match until the end of the movie. As for me and all the other “good girls” out there, we tend to take longer finding the right men because we have standards and set boundaries. Throughout my years of singleness (pre-and post-marriage/divorce), men seem to write me off when I am upfront about my beliefs. Had I not set boundaries or had standards, I would probably be with just about any man right now. Maybe I might have had a string of unhealthy relationships. So, it is better to be alone and wait for that right person than to be with just anyone because everyone else around you seems to have someone.