When I was young and knew nothing about money, I believed what our priest told us about the rich: they were bad, they'd go to hell, and though they might have it good here on earth, later, under the lash of the devil, they'd know suffering just like us poor folks. He said something to that effect, probably under the auspices of paraphrasing Jesus. So I grew up a little afraid of the rich and their godless insouciance. But that didn't stop me from wanting to live among them, to be one of them, even if it meant eternal damnation. Not too long after that, I stopped asking God to bless my mommy and daddy in my prayers, and I started asking Him for cold, hard cash.
I'm from the "other side of the tracks," a place much like the street in the opening shot in Pretty in Pink. The pan of those squat, unremarkable homes stacked side-by-side like rotting teeth, reminds me of the one-street-light town, near an ugly blue-collar city, where I was raised. All the salt-box houses were surrounded by chain-link fences, behind which messy toddlers wandered shirtless and upset, one hand up their noses, the other holding up their saggy diapers. If you had ambitions, you were scoffed at. For instance, some mothers had part-time jobs, maybe at the arena, maybe taking in other people's kids, the extra money possibly affording them an above-ground pool or a trip to Florida to see some relatives. While they'd unpack their ping-pong tables or show off their Siamese cats ("She's the indoor-only kind!"), my mother and her friends would mutter about them behind their backs. Who did they think they were, with their salon perms and their campers, smoking their menthol cigarettes on their new decks, hovering above the rest of us like they think they're so good? What, do they think they're rich or something?
As I got older, I became savvy to the fact that others had what I wanted, and so I became rabidly, unflatteringly covetous. Whenever we drove by the mansion homes of others, I'd picture my distracted mother pulling our rusty station wagon over in front of the U-shaped driveway. "Well, nice to see you people. Do take care," I'd imagine yelling to the depressed cargo, before breaking into a sprint at the bend, following the sound of chamber music and Corgis echoing off the sun-dappled roof of my real family's home. "Oh Christ, quit talking fancy," my mother always replied in the daydream, shattering the rest of it by tossing her spent cigarette into the mansion's pristine hedges. Acting fancy was a sin to my mother, unless someone better than you (read: rich) was pinning a carnation to your homemade prom dress or wrestling a half-carat diamond ring over your knocked-up knuckle.
I must make this distinction: we weren't poor as in hungry, we were poor as in broke and tacky.
To covetous me, it was worse than hunger, because middle-class comforts were dangled right before my eyes. I could see them, almost touch them, but I did not have them because my parents couldn't afford them. Their crowd spent their money on cigarettes, bingo and beer, so I grew up not just ashamed of being poor, but also of the bad taste and manners that seemed to go with the lifestyle. And I vowed to get out.
That's why Pretty in Pink (incidentally, only written by John Hughes) was such a revelation. It showed me my world, and though I occupied it with less grace and sartorial imagination than did Molly Ringwald's Andie,
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| You don't want guys to know you're poor. They will think you are desperate. They will also think your poverty has perverted your morals, hence you're easy. |
I did carry her chronic shame. Like Andie, I didn't bear the mantel of our poverty with stoicism. It enraged me. And my parents' depressing acceptance of "our lot" became the fuel that stoked my considerable ambitions. Before Pretty in Pink, I'd seen class issues portrayed in films, but I'd rarely seen poor people who looked like me, at least not in contemporary movies I lined up to see. In some of John Hughes' other films like The Breakfast Club and Some Kind of Wonderful, class is tackled head on. But in the former, the drama mostly takes place in a posh, modern high school. And the latter is less about my kind of poverty than unpopularity.
Class and all its implications really sets in in high school, when teenagers become aware that, indeed, they are held hostage by their family's socioeconomic status. After all, you live with these people. What they are, you are. If they're poor and unemployable — as in the case of Andie's father, played by the poetically hung-over Harry Dean Stanton — then you are poor and unemployable. When Andie wakes her father for a job interview, she says, "Come on, this means a lot to me." What she means: not only do they need the money, but Dad sitting around in his undershirt on the front lawn drinking beer with Ducky is beginning to reflect badly on her, too.
In Pretty in Pink, Andie's particular dilemma is that she's smart enough to be "allowed," as she puts it, to attend the rich kids' high school. But that's also where her "otherness" is made daily apparent. In one class, (the topics, Marxism, the New Deal and the Emergency Banking Act), her snooty, rich classmates tease her about the uniqueness of her vintage outfit. They suggest its history implies a certain kind of cheapness, and while Andie's ironic punk sensibility completely eludes them, her pride doesn't. So they are merciless. Later, when her crush, Blaine, comes to her store to buy a record, at first she's thrilled to see him. But Andie can't help asking him if he'll be paying with an American Express Platinum card, bitter sarcasm licking the edges of her words. Her face beautifully expresses that awful dichotomy of hating the thing you want, or maybe it's wanting the thing you hate. Either way, Andie suddenly realizes that to date Blaine is to betray her tribe, to shun her world and perhaps leave behind her real friends. She's tormented by the decision. As for me, I couldn't wait to say see ya.
Unlike Andie, some of my friends were from wealthy families. They lived in those same mansions Andie and Ducky eye on their ride home from the nightclub. The first mansion home I coveted, one I imagined living in, was the local private high school. It was the opposite of our clapboard hovel, which was in the kind of neighborhood that considered the local perv eccentric, where people thought curfews hung in windows, and ferrets were pets. St. Mary's Academy, by contrast, was covered in ivy and set back from the road on two acres of velveteen grass.
I imagined nestling in a window box sketching wildlife, like a girl on the cover of a "Get Well" card. Wandering my friends' fancy houses, I didn't covet the chintz couches or stainless-steel appliances (let alone a basic dishwashing machine); I marveled at the idea of ornamental soap, cut flowers and the salted mixed nuts — the good kind, minus peanuts — which were cradled in crystal bowls strewn about the house. I loved that people had towels that were for "guests," whoever they were. (The concept of having guests was exotic, our house too overcrowded and messy for such social banalities. Plus, we were mostly related to other poor people, and they don't travel much.)
Sure, I wanted my friends' Nikes or New Balance shoes, their Le Sport Sac purses and Esprit sweaters. But what really made me dizzy with envy was their routines. They practiced piano after school and took makeup-application courses as Sears. At a certain time and every evening, their not-previously-frozen dinners would appear on matching plates alongside matching cutlery. If I was invited for dinner, I rarely stayed. I couldn't guarantee that I wouldn't gulp down the food in embarrassingly ravenous bites, not because I was hungry, but because the abundance seemed bottomless. That's also where Andie and I differ. While I regarded those homes with the subtlety of a cross-eyed Romanian orphan, Andie regards them affectionately, with an expression that seems almost homesick. She doesn't wish she lived in one of them so much as she seems surprised that she doesn't.
As soon as humanly possible, I did what Andie did: I got a part-time job.
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| Pretty in Pink was my generation's Annie Hall. |
Mine wasn't in a cool record store but a pricey steak house, one my family could not afford to patronize. After my dad left for good, we teetered on total penury. Five of us shared a two-bedroom rental. My mother worked several jobs, collapsing each night onto the fold-out in the living room. But for three shifts a week at the steak house, I could pretend I was a member of the middle-to-upper class. The restaurant gave me a uniform to care for, a list of rules to follow, a philosophy to memorize and a tradition to uphold. I was part of the restaurant's family, so I began to have much less to do with my own. Though happy I had found work I loved, my family dismissed the things I shared with them over supper. I often felt like I was talking to a table of deaf Vikings when I explained that steak should be cooked medium rare, not blackened and attached to T-bones. Vegetables deserved to be steamed just shy of crunchy, never uncanned and boiled to a pudding in buttery water. Pitchers serve fly balls, people, not beer! And salad dressing can be formed from a multitude of fresh ingredients, not just spanked out of a sticky bottle. I was becoming the worst kind of snob: the kind without money.
At first, my paycheck went almost entirely to clothing, whatever was in, whatever the rich girls were wearing, anything to keep the awful shame of being poor at bay. The designer labels acted as armor, protecting me from my wealthy peers' judgment. Not that it happened much. The rich kids I knew were too blithe, too happy for that kind of cruelty. So while my mother may have filed for bankruptcy, and we might have had Kraft Dinner for the fourth night in a row, at school, away from our shoddy street, I looked like a million bucks. Or at least a couple hundred thou.
Pretty in Pink was also my generation's Annie Hall, because the film ignited in me a lifelong love affair with used, vintage or repurposed clothing. It was a while before I understood how to wear — let alone shop for — vintage clothing. I had to move to the city for that. But I knew how to sew. I used to shorten my mother's '50s plaid skirts, rip the sleeves off blouses and tie them in front, and cut my brothers' jeans into floor-length hippie skirts. I was known for having a quirky, creative style, and it became another way to distract people from my poverty.
But there's an irony to wearing vintage. Andie's outfits, set off by fedoras and pearls, are from bygone eras that reflect her old-fashioned belief that hard work, honesty and loyalty might one day earn her a good life. At the same time, the outfits represent a big fuck-you to that notion. By the '80s, hard work,
honesty and loyalty — especially, say, to a corporation — guaranteed you nothing. Witness Andie's father, a man Ronald Reagan's policies practically created: the disenfranchised, middle-aged victim of trickle-down economics and depression. That's also why I was saddened when Iona, Andie's punk, funny boss, sells out her singular style to date the yuppie pet-store guy. Annie Potts is marvelous in this movie. As a woman who's closer to Iona's age now, I see how Potts really nails that combination of feeling both nostalgic for youth while recoiling from the idea of reliving it. And when Andie tells Iona she's going to the prom, Potts' response, "I envy you," is infused with just the right amount of love. It's impossible to imagine another actress in the role. Andie's relationship with Iona also reminds me of all the maternal crushes I'd get on my cool female bosses, the ones who had raucous love lives and a bit of a drinking problem. I'd taken my cues on how to be a woman from them, my own mother being too overwhelmed and too depressed to provide many useful hints.
As for Harry Dean Stanton, he breaks my heart as Andie's unemployed, single dad. He doesn't quite fit. He's almost a little too sexy/seedy in the role. And even though there's genuine affection between the characters, I've always felt that they were in two different movies, his taking place in a dusty border town and hers in Hughes's natural habitat, Chicago. But it works because their scenes are always authentic, especially the one when Andie arrives home overjoyed about being asked to the prom by Blaine. Though I'm not sure about Stanton's shortie bathrobe or how he tugs the front part down as he crosses his legs on the couch, I do love their rapport. She gets to be a vulnerable daughter in this scene and not his constant caretaker.
When you're poor, dating is complicated. You don't want guys to know you're poor. They will think you are desperate. They will also think your poverty has perverted your morals, hence you're easy. That's why my heart seized at the scene in which Andie tells Blaine to pick her up at the mall for their date. I had done that so many times, the mall acting as a neutral ground where our disparate classes could meet and mingle. And even if I was being judged by the things I bought, fact is, at least I was buying something.
I remember a date with a guy named Curtis whose father was a judge. They had money. They had class. They lived in one of the most secluded and exclusive neighborhoods in the city. They had an indoor pool, plus a Jacuzzi in the master suite. They even paid other people to mow the lawn. Meanwhile we had moved to a tiny rental four doors down from the most dangerous tavern in the county. Weekends, my younger sister and brother tended the bar and cultivated regulars with names such as Snow Monkey, Biker Pete, Rye and Ginger (a couple), and Old Bill, who drank until his piss-stained corduroys could no
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| It's transfixing to see a beautifully enraged teenage girl who's not covered in pig's blood or Prada. |
longer grip the barstool. Despite mortal danger, my mother was thrilled about the tavern jobs because now her younger children could buy their own cigarettes instead of always stealing hers. This made it hard for me to imagine a boy pulling up our gravel driveway clutching a corsage. So Curtis picked me up for my date at the mall.
After dinner, for which he paid, he brought me back to his house. It was empty of parents. There, he made several futile attempts to have sex with me. Eventually I shoved him off my bruised, exhausted body and told him to take me home. I was no prude, nor was I a virgin, but I knew he didn't treat other girls like that. I knew he had no intention of making me his girlfriend. So I let him drive me right to the front steps of our rental and he did not offer to walk me to the door. Imagining that our new neighborhood frightened him gave me small comfort.
He never called again.
I have to admit that Blaine's appeal has always eluded me, but I have always found Steff's predatory flirtations with Andie infuriatingly sexy. Andie accuses him of just wanting sex, though Steff counters by saying he wants something more meaningful, something I fell for again and again. Who knows, maybe they meant it. But I always got my heart broken in high school by guys like Steff, guys who knew no matter what they said and did, below them was the safety net of their parents' money. To me, that was more exotic than ritual cannibalism or voodoo-chanting gypsies, and I deeply crushed on boys who had it. It was never about the money or their nice cars. It was about their confidence, the way they seemed to walk the earth like they'd invented it. This was years before I understood the difference between confidence and arrogance, years before I understood that Steff loved Andie because unlike him and the girls he dated, she had an enormous amount of self-respect. You can see that when their eyes meet outside of the school, just before Andie confronts Blaine about the cowardly way he pulls out of the prom. It's also one of the hottest moments in the whole movie, even hotter than Blaine and Andie's kiss, or Ducky's dance in the record store. That's due largely to James Spader's incredible carnality, perhaps due to the fact that he was in his mid-twenties. But Steff practically hate-fucks her with his eyes. Or maybe that's just me suffering the last vestiges of my sick crush on his sexy venality.
Watching Pretty in Pink all these years later, I am reminded of what Andie has that I didn't. I was rejected over and over again in high school not because I was poor or from the wrong side of the tracks. I was dumped because I was ashamed of those things. I knew then, and certainly know now, that the rich have no monopoly on self-respect. In fact, in most of John Hughes's movies, money indicates the absence of respect. The "Richies," as Andie calls Blaine and his ilk, are depicted as spiritually bankrupt, morally vacuous, debauched, spoiled addicts. Steff is never without a cigarette, a drink or a joint in his hand. After Blaine calls him on his bad behavior, Steff's given the best line in the movie: "Would I treat my parents house like this if money was any kind of issue?"
Even Blaine is exposed as a flawed sell-out, a guy who rejects Andie when he's threatened with social ostracization. In Pretty in Pink, Hughes is telling us that it's not money, clothes and boys that bring us happiness. Love, honesty and integrity are far greater commodities. And Andie knows this.
But the most powerful scene in the movie is when Andie loudly excoriates Blaine at the lockers, accusing him of being ashamed to take her to the prom. It's still so enlivening, so transfixing to see a beautifully enraged teenaged girl, one who's not covered in pig's blood, track marks or Prada. I replay that scene over and over the way my brothers might replay the finale of Hoosiers. It's Molly Ringwald's finest moment in the film, and, I would suggest, her career. She verges on ugly, her face contorting with disgust for Blaine, which is why the ending — reportedly reshot with Blaine instead of Ducky as the victorious suitor — feels inauthentic to me. I never believed that Andie would forgive so easily after that humiliation, metaphorically dropping her purse on the ground in their passionate parking-lot kiss.
That said, I carry that red-headed girl in my heart to this day. I carry her pride and her unassuming beauty, her integrity and her ingenuity. Andie Walsh was everything I couldn't be back then, because I was mired in epic self-pity. But Andie demonstrates there is freedom in self-love, because you can't be victimized by other peoples' opinions or labels when your core is solid and impenetrable, and when you know you're loved by those who matter. After all these years, I can honestly say that I still want to be like Andie Walsh when I grow up.
