Perfect Moments of Escape

My husband refuses to watch Pretty in Pink. He considers it vapid and reductive and is constantly surprised by my attachment to Andie, her boy dramas erupting in a fizzle of pink paisley and self-induced misery. Same goes for Allison, Ally Sheedy’s character in The Breakfast Club, Samantha in Sixteen Candles.

“They give up everything for those guys,” he says. “Isn’t that insulting?”

Well, yes, it should be. But I don’t care.

For millions of women raised in the power-suited ’80s, John Hughes’ plucky heroines were nothing short of a godsend: permission to be mouthy, indignant, different at a time when quiet conformity was de rigueur. Hughes’ death on Thursday prompted an outpouring of gratitude from ladies indebted to his oeuvre for reassuring them that it was okay not to be okay, to hate your family and cherish true love above all else. In other words, to be a teenager.

But for ’90s girls like me raised on a diet of Blow-Pops and Bikini Kill, Hughes’ female leads were less reflections of ourselves than welcome respites from a teen culture much rougher around the edges. Our Knight in Shining Armor wasn’t Jake Ryan from Sixteen Candles, but rather My So-Called Life‘s Jordan Catalano, an edgy, screwed up musician. Instead of cute little Duckie from Pretty in Pink as a friend, we had My So-Called Life‘s Ricky: gay, homeless and in danger of being killed just for going to school. Our best friend didn’t run a record store; she slept with museum guards and nursed a serious drug problem sophomore year. We’d already accepted that it was okay to not be okay — we were just trying to make it to prom without getting shot, raped or pregnant.

So when I first saw Andie ditch Duckie for the seersucker Blaine in Pretty in Pink, or Allison wipe off “all that black shit” to woo poor, unsuspecting Sporto in The Breakfast Club, I wasn’t angry or jealous — just enchanted by a world in which everything wrapped up so easily. Obviously I would never make those choices; we daughters of feminism understood that compromising your life for some dude was a prime example of how not to behave. But these movies were so vivid and hopeful, so absolutely escapist, it was difficult not to get sucked into the dream that a boy was all it took to be happy — even if personal experience had proven that not to be the case.

This Hughesian notion that love can, and should, conquer all is among the most common themes in his films and the one that so frequently seduces women who, by all accounts, should know better. I still wish that true love could dissolve years of righteous (and justifiable) anger, just like it does in every one of his movies from Sixteen Candles to Some Kind of Wonderful. Allison’s slut/prude conundrum is erased by her virginal makeover, Samantha forgets her family’s neglect thanks to Jake Ryan and a fiery cake. Even Some Kind of Wonderful‘s tough tomboy, Watts — by far Hughes’ most realistic and relatable female character — mutes her gender-inequity bitterness once her best friend-cum-boyfriend hands over those diamond earrings.

But this fantasy is only possible in the Hughes universe because each character’s choices are predicated on a tomorrow that never comes. Andie chooses the richie over the working class hero, Duckie understands, the end. Allison gets a makeover, the jock gives her his letter jacket, problems solved. No promise that these choices were right, no epilogue to sum up what happened after the closing credits. Just a simple glimpse at that one perfect moment.

Of course, if we extended the frame on The Breakfast Club, we’d no doubt see Sporto bail on Allison once his friends caught wind of their tryst. And Andie’s future is all but predicted in Some Kind of Wonderful‘s Amanda Jones: girl from the wrong side of the tracks scores a rich boyfriend and hates herself for what she’s compromised. Angst doesn’t really disappear. It shouldn’t. Bitterness is the bile that keeps us from snuggling up in our parents’ den until the end of time.

Teenage life feels like that, though: the few perfect moments, so sweet and easy, glued together by the rest of the gawky, upside-down mess.

That’s why the Hughes fantasy was, and is, so risk-free. As girls raised in the era of consequence and third-wave feminism, we knew damn well what would happen to our not-so-perfect moments if we made any of the choices a Hughes Girl had. Trust me, if an older sister wasn’t warning us, then Kathleen Hanna or Angela Chase — arguably our decade’s queen of the stupid mistake — certainly were. For us, Andie, Allison, Samantha and Watts were abstractions, visions of a high-school experience that spoke to not our realities but rather our desire to watch the world from a simpler standpoint.

Because in the course of all our self-awareness and contextual understanding of the boys/relationships/birth control/gender gap cluster, we sometimes — oops! — forgot that it was okay to not be okay. That we occasionally need to curl up in the fetal position and wish for a boy to pick up our tired, confused pieces. Hinging your life on a boy savior is one thing; but settling in with a cozy blanket to watch Andie and Blane wander off into a misty forever of kept promises and fulfilled fantasies… that’s just how we lick the wounds left by a life rarely so perfect. And true escape is never insulting.