Book Review: Cher's Furiously Fit Workout

Title: Cher’s Furiously Fit Workout

Author: Randi Reisfeld

Date: 1996

Publisher: Pocket Books

ISBN: 0-671-00322-4

Length: 163 pages

Quote: “We are totally the bomb. Of course, we do have that little annoyance known as high school to contend with.”

Cher Horowitz is a type of character, the narrator whose faults are obvious to everyone but herself, that had always before been done much better in the U.K. than in the U.S. Jane Austen’s Emma was very young, self-centered, a fashion victim, helping a friend impress a rich husband, trying to impress one rich man and not realizing that she’d already made quite an impression on a different one, almost but not quite failing to achieve the wedding that was every fashion victim’s dream in the 1820s. Well, as some movie producers realized in the 1990s, if Emma were a contemporary Bright Young Thing she’d still be in high school. The producers ran with this idea, got excited, got carried away and almost let it run them off their feet—but authors H.B. Gilmour and Randi Reisfeld rescued them with the unprecedented creation of Cher Horowitz, the embodiment of the concept of “gilding fine gold and painting lilies white.” Cher was Emma plus the stereotypes of Teen Princess and Jewish Princess and blonde and California Girl. In real life it’d be hard for anything to be such a self-parody and live—but in the movie and the TV series, Gilmour convinced us that there just might be a golden girl as pampered, as sheltered, and as clueless as Cher, and she might be a lovable child at heart.

She’s exasperating. She says and does things that make you just know the reason why she has school friends has to do with Daddy’s deep pockets, and want to say to the adults in her life, “Spanking was not always altogether bad.” And at her sweetest she’s merely a naïve little girl. She’s not a real heroine, nor destined ever to be one. She’s a caricature, meant to give us an opportunity to laugh at the golden Teen Princesses of our schools....but gently.

There is something lovable about the chutzpah of a high school girl even aspiring to be a Teen Princess without having a steady boyfriend. And having adventures that end happily, with Cher achieving at least part of her goal, and still being uncoupled. If you’re looking for teen heroines who stand on their own two feet, there’s Menolly inDragon Singer, Hermione in Harry Potter...and...and...well, there’s Cher Horowitz in Clueless.

In this episode, Cher is still in grade ten, and teetering on the verge of being left out. Her very best friend, De, played by the young Stacey Dash, has decided to reconnect with her Black heritage (by buying books by Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou, of course; no slumming for these kids). Her second-best friend, Tai, has taken a volunteer job. Even her worst friend, Amber, makes a bid for attention in her own right by running for class president. Cher, feeling a need to call attention to herself, decides to make an exercise video. But it’s hard to motivate her friends to stop preening their sleek little selves long enough to do actual exercises.

Like the rest of the series, this is a self-parody with a happy ending.

Those who look for political or at least social overtones everywhere will find a few. Cher’s circle of school friends represent all the major ethnic minorities; in addition to Cher and Amber being Jewish, De being both Black and Jewish, and De’s boyfriend Murray and his pal Sean being Black, their other school friends have Chinese, Japanese, Iranian, Hawaiian, and Spanish names, and of course the little boy whose name was Christian, in the first book or two, was “gay.” Cher even has a grandmother who still remembers how to cook chicken soup, and Murray’s always annoying De by trying to talk and dress like a rapper. These kids, as epitomized by De’s quest for self-understanding through bestsellers, feel some sense of ethnicity, but their real identity is strictly Beverly Hills. There were kids like that in 1996; there still are. And as long as Americans accept any sense of obligation toward any “historic victim groups,” kids like them will, five years later, lap up the benefits. They’re so sleek and pretty and poised and prepared, if they don’t win any competition they ever enter, they’ll just know it’s because of prejudice against their ethnic-minority heritage.

But for now they’re all just kids, and they’ll succeed in making a juvenile exercise video, giving readers lots of opportunities to laugh at their follies along the way.