Book Review: Southern Fried Makeover

Title: Southern Fried Makeover

Author: Carla Jablonski

Date: 1999

Publisher: Pocket Books

ISBN: 0-671-03437-5

Length: 149 pages

Quote: “‘Maybe you should try to find out about your man’s interests,’ Gigi instructed Janet, ‘instead of expecting him to pay attention to yours.’”

Carla Jablonski had an axe to grind. That’s the only explanation. Gigi Rabinowitz , high school antifeminist and Cher Horowitz’s new worst friend who makes even Amber seem lovable, may have been based on a real person, and that real person was the late Helen Andelin from California. A couple of Gigi’s bad manners even have counterparts in the Southern States, like Gigi’s encouraging Murray to use the bordering-on-obscene word “honey”to refer to De. More of them do not. Gigi reads not as a real Southerner transplanted to Beverly Hills, but more like a Northerner transplanted to Georgia first and then Beverly Hills, trying very very hard to be a Southerner but not quite getting it right.

Item: Gigi introduces herself to Cher, De, and Amber, before their parents push them to work together on a project, by jumping up on a table in the cafeteria and lecturing Janet, De, and others on their dating behavior. At length. Hello? Helen Andelin was invited to speak to groups of church ladies. It is hard to imagine, even for a homely little thing who’s been bullied at her old school, given a makeover, and unleashed on a new school to take her revenge on strangers, a real Southern Belle preaching at people without a solid invitation. A real Southern Trash Act who wanted to challenge Cher’s popularity would drop her barbs by ones, behind the backs of her victims. 

Item: Gigi defends herself from the “Southerners are racists”meme by overtly flirting with Murray, who is Black, in the presence of De, who is also Black, and Sean, who is also Black—and single. According to the books Murray is generally agreed to be more attractive than Sean; according to the TV stills on the covers there’s little difference between them. A real Southerner might feel obliged to show he or she was willing to consider interracial dating, and somewhere in the former Confederacy there probably has been a formerly pudgy and homely girl who wanted to feel that she was getting revenge on a cheerleader by stealing a cheerleader-type’s boyfriend, but I find it hard to imagine a real Southerner making a play for someone else’s date in the victim’s presence. Girls who took Helen Andelin’s Fascinating Girl seriously would’ve known enough to make their bids for Murray’s attention behind De’s back.

Item: Gigi overtly brags about her successes and bashes the other kids’ successes. Real Southerners know that that’s not the most effective kind of verbal attack by age three at the latest. Bragging is such a Yankee-ish way of annoying people, so much more the way Cher and De exasperate people than the way a Southerner would.

So the only way to read Gigi is to imagine that her real formative years, in the North, possibly with her real father, were so horrible that during the year Daddy bought her all the cosmetic surgery Gigi decided to forget her real childhood, like maybe in Chicago, and pretend she was from Atlanta when she moved to Beverly Hills. Her parents say they've always been married to each other, but they seem like unreliable sources of information. 

This explains some of Gigi’s other mistakes...like “honey.” Real Southerners do call people that, just as they say “bless your heart,” but these expressions are always put-downs. If Gigi were a real Southerner with a social personality that’s one big cry for help, such that she wanted to annoy De and flirt with Murray, she’d be calling De “honey.” Murray might be “darlin’” or “handsome,”or else Gigi would be drawling “Mur-raaayyy”in an insinuating cooing tone that’d make De’s fingers twitch with rage. Or, if Murray were not by far the nicest boy in their class—he calls De things like “baby”and “honey” because bickering is the way the two soulmates keep their relationship age-appropriate, but otherwise he’s nice—and Gigi wanted to turn him off, then she might be saying things like “Murray-honey, I’m sure any of these six other girls would rather sit next to you than I would.”

But wherever Gigi really comes from, Jablonski certainly succeeds in showing us why every girl at their school wants her to go back there. Cher and her crowd are consistently Clueless, and have not noticeably matured between grades ten and twelve, but Gigi is a real poison-pill.

And Daddy Horowitz wants the Rabinowitzes as clients. And the Rabinowitzes want Cher to be Gigi’s friend, especially when the girls’ school is tapped for a talent search: The winning V.J. will get a glamorous internship that will move him or her to a different school, near the TV studio. Cher instantly wants to take this opportunity to highlight her beauty-consultant skills by coaching all the contestants, and she and De want Gigi to lose so much that they almost forget how much more pleasant a place their school will become if Gigi wins and goes away.

As if that message didn’t make the moral clear, there’s a subplot; Murray almost loses his friend Sean to competition for the V.J. job before the boys consider the advantages of cooperation. The book doesn’t spell out whether Gigi or the boys will win. Readers already know that, and they know why: The young men who played Sean and Murray had a full-season contract...

Anyway, it’s funny.