Am I the Same Girl?:

Pretty in Pink and the Paternalism of John Hughes Robin

Heindselman

The fatal error of PrettyinPink isn’t, as some people have insisted, that Andie (Molly Ringwald) ends up with the bland “richie” Blaine (Andrew McCarthy) instead of the dynamic Duckie (Jon Cryer). A lot of hay was made about the fact that the pro-Duckie ending—the one originally conceived by screenwriter John Hughes—was ditched for one that market-tested more favorably, and for a minute in the ’80s, the movie exemplified the sacrifice of good cinematic storytelling to the lowest common denominator.

But the truth is, both Duckie and Blaine are all wrong for Andie, and this is a casting problem, and by the time the filmmakers realized there was a casting problem, it was too late. The choice between McCarthy’s blank-faced boringness and Cryer’s kid-brother neediness was pretty much unnavigable. McCarthy may have failed to produce many sparks with Ringwald, but the chemistry Cryer generated was deadly for being so fraternal. Those horrified focus groups no doubt responded to the original ending the same way you or I would’ve responded to Marsha Brady giving Peter the eye.

To my mind, the most glaring flaw—the unforgivable flaw—of PrettyinPink is John Hughes’s mistreatment of Iona (Annie Potts), Andie’s older coworker at the record store and one of the most lovable, magnetic, mercurial, and fun-to-look-at characters of any romantic comedy. In scene after scene, Iona gloriously reinvents herself, exploring female archetypes with exquisite playfulness and a Cindy Sherman-esque attention to detail.

She looks like this.

And this.

And this.

And this.

Dazzling, right? But if we’re to believe this movie, Iona spends night after night alone, flopped out on her bed, listening to old records and mooning over her glory days. Because evidently there are zero men in the entire Chicago metropolitan area who might be interested in a thirty-something woman who’s beautiful, fun, effervescent, and a genius of self-invention.

It’s the self-invention part that’s the problem. The whole self-invention thing has to go—it’s messing up Iona’s chances of finding a husband! And in Hughes’s world, being unmarried, childless, of modest means, and nearing middle age is just about the worst fate imaginable. So he decides it’s time for Iona to getnormal. He presents her with a Flock of Seagulls haircut, a yuppie wardrobe, and—ta-DA!—a boyfriend. A divorced doctor with kids.

If you don’t remember how bad her makeover is, words alone can’t do it justice.

I was 14 when this movie came out, and I remember thinking: No. And: Why?

That oversized, body-effacing jacket? The popped collar? Those weirdpearls? And what kind of monster would give the goddess Iona a perm?

But her boldly suburban new style wins Andie’s unqualified praise, to which Iona self-deprecates, “Aw, I look like a mother.” Andie replies, “Well, a little. But that’s okay.”

It’s really not okay, though. Leaving aside the aesthetic wrongness of her look—after all, who didn’t go astray in the ’80s?—it seems clear there’s no going back for Iona. She has accepted this mainstreaming of her persona as the cost of finding love. John Hughes has turned her into a high-functioning Stepford wife, and we’re supposed to be happy about it.

This wasn’t the first time John Hughes decided that one of his ladies needed an overhaul. Iona is reminiscent of his previous makeover victim, The Breakfast Club’s Allison (Ally Sheedy), an artistic social misfit who—under the tutelage of the prom queen Claire (Ringwald)—wipes away her (entirely appropriate) goth eyeliner, tames her Chrissie Hynde bangs under a prim headband, and submits herself to the approving gaze of the Jock. The Jock! Who has precisely nothing in common with her. But oddball chicks need a stabilizing masculine influence, you see, someone like a doctor or a high school football star who can confer a bit of civilizing status and bring them into the fold (On the other hand, if the rich, popular Claire finds herself attracted to the penniless, darkly brooding John Bender—well, she can give him her diamond stud to remember her by, but that’s as far as it goes. A boy can pluck a girl out of the gutter but not the other way around).

After the early-’80s reign of raunchy teen comedies—with plots that leaned heavily on voyeurism and other forms of humiliation—John Hughes was incalculably important to us girl viewers coming of age in the mid-’80s. He virtually invented the teen rom-com for us, and we were grateful. But his paternalistic streak was undeniable. He created genuinely interesting female characters and then couldn’t stop himself from overcorrecting them. Like a dad, he couldn’t brook their autonomy, couldn’t let them pursue a path he thought unwholesome, couldn’t permit them to seriously explore another, perhaps darker side of themselves. Like a dad, he just wanted them to turn out normal. He just wanted to protect them. And like a dad, he disappointed us all the more for how much we needed him.

AllphotographsinthisarticlearecourtesyofParamountPictures,1986.