Being Molly Ringwald

It's scary how much of the mid-80s I spent pining away after John Hughes's little ingenue. God, I like totally wanted to be Molly Ringwald. Okay maybe not her, exactly, but the characters she played. Like Samantha Baker in Sixteen Candles, I mean the way Jake Ryan stared at her in class while she filled out that sex survey. I wanted boys to gaze myopically at me that way. And how he just magically--wow--showed up there at the church, waiting for Sam after her sister's wedding, then that scene with the flaming birthday cake. I wanted a cute boy to come wait in the street for me and kiss me over an open flame. (This of course was a precursor to the boom-box-over-the-head scene from Say Anything. Eventually I wanted that, too.)

What I wanted most, though, in that way we "want" our lives to magically echo the movies, was to be Andie in Pretty In Pink. Except maybe not so poor. And with better parents. I just thought she was sooo coool, you know? I was ready to drop everything (read: the 8th grade) to get a job at Homer's and spend all my time putting together killer, faux-baroque outfits at the Goodwill. Actually, I tried that thrift-store-chic thing for awhile, but it never really took. There's something about second-hand clothes from an unknown source that I can't quite "do." It's not that I'm a snob. Most of the baby's summer wardrobe has come from my friend's son, Bode. That's fine. And I've pilfered most of my friend Amy's maternity wardrobe. For whatever reason, other seconds just oog me out, no matter how good a deal.

Anyway, truth of the matter is, I was always more Duckie than Andie, more awkward than ingenue. When it came to unrequited love I was the usually the flame keeper, not the object. I sang into the hair brush while you fetched the juice boxes. I rode my bike past your house. I was, ultimately, your last chance for a prom date. Okay, so maybe it wasn't really that bad. I did have a date to the senior prom--my on-again, off-again first "real" boyfriend, Bill, who now (incidentally) is serving time on a federal weapons charge after doing time for meth production and fathering three children by three different women. Andie lived on the wrong side of the tracks--I just dated there. By the way, on August 29th they're releasing a new "Pretty In Pink" DVD that will (allegedly) contain not only the movie as it appeared in theaters, but also, among the extras, the original ending in which Andie chooses Duckie over Blaine. I don't know how I feel about that. Although Andrew McCarthy did look like shit in that white tux...

Hey wait--I just realized--I can't go without mentioning Claire, princess darling of "The Breakfast Club." Sure she was annoyingly high-maintenance, as rich as Andie had been poor (and yes, at this point I realize I'm talking about characters as if they were real people), but there was something about this swing of the pendulum. Aha! Molly Ringwald was an Everyman. She was poor! She was rich! She was rejected! She was the shit! I envied her sense of style, her machismo. I envied her stylish little pout and that subtle way she landed the bad boy. It was the lipstick trick, right? Had to be.