6 Not-So-Great Things I Noticed While Watching Clueless as an Adult

Cher’s a virgin, Dionne is almost a virgin (until her brush with death on the freeway), and Tai is very experienced. In fact, Tai’s “way harsh” dig at Cher during a fight is that she’s a “virgin who can’t drive.” The fact that so much emphasis is put on being virgins, losing their respective virginities, and the art of having sex in water is just too much for a bunch of kids who are obviously just that – kids. And as an adult and parent myself, it terrifies me for the eventual teen years of my children.

The way Murray outs Christian to Cher and Dionne is equally troubling. His sexuality is no one’s business but his own, and the descriptors Murray uses are completely inappropriate.

It’s an unfortunate reality that many adolescent girls struggle with self-image, but having Cher list everything she eats in a day (not healthy stuff, by the way) and complain about feeling “like a heifer” isn’t ideal. I just can’t help but imagine what Clueless would be like if Cher had someone by her side to steer her away from those sorts of comments.

The movie trope of a nerdy or outcast girl being made over into a popular high school queen was way too prominent in the ’90s and early 2000s. To Cher, Tai only had value after she gave her a makeover, which, Cher claimed, Tai was “in desperate need of.” It plays on the idea that a teenage girl’s value is measured by how she looks, and that’s not healthy for anyone. Watching this sequence as an adolescent conditioned me to believe that notion was accurate.

Elton makes tons of moves on Cher well before he kisses her at the Valley party and eventually tries to shove his tongue down her throat while she’s trapped in his car. Watching those scenes as an adult with kids to whom I am trying to teach the opposite of that behavior, all I see are the signs that Elton may have made even worse advances on other girls. Clueless is a comedy, so his behavior is played off and disregarded a couple of scenes later. If the movie had taken another approach, however, it may have been easier to see the severity of Elton’s actions right away.

Dionne and Murray have the only solid relationship in Clueless, and I use that term incredibly lightly. There isn’t much that’s healthy about their relationship, even though we as viewers and, in some cases, as teenage viewers are supposed to view them as the only functional couple in the film. Instead, we have Murray cheating on Dionne, Murray using derogatory words like “woman” to talk at her, and the two of them fighting at school, at parties, and even on the freeway while Dionne is learning to drive.

Josh and Cher’s relationship is predictable and, if you don’t look too closely at it, adorable. But if you really look at how things progress between them, it’s a little predatory. Josh is older than Cher by at least three years (a huge difference when you’re talking about teens), and possibly more than that, as a college student. There are moments in Clueless when he gazes at her or flirts with her and, if they were both the same age, it might be a little more acceptable. But the truth is, Josh is an older guy and even before he and Cher have their long-awaited kiss, he is interested in her: a high school junior. It’s a little icky.

When Josh and Cher finally realize how they feel about each other, he lists all of the things he admires about her. Spoiler alert – there are just three things and two of them are “beautiful” and “gorgeous.” Oh yeah, and the other is “popular.” Maybe Josh could have also said he admires how Cher takes care of other people and tries to be a good person. I get that Paul Rudd only had so much dialogue to work with, but his character would have been so much more of an adequate match for Cher if he actually said he saw beyond what everyone sees on the outside.

Maybe that kiss is supposed to just symbolize everything he feels?