If A Girl Isn't Pretty...
...like a Miss Atlantic City.
Welcome to Cheaper Than Therapy, a healing newsletter for 80s babies by Shani Silver. This newsletter does not publish free content, but if you’d like to read it you can subscribe here. Thank you for enjoying the work of independent writers.
“If a girl isn’t pretty, like a Miss Atlantic City, all she gets from life is pity, and a pat.”
Funny Girl is the first movie in my memory. I have seen it an uncountable number of times, thanks in large part to my mother’s VHS copy she made when it came on television once. My version of the film includes brief snippets of commercials where her play/record button-pushing missed the mark. I can recite Funny Girl from start to finish if properly motivated, it is the only musical I genuinely like apart from Hamilton, and it is only now, in my forties, that I can recognize the impact it’s had on one very impressionable, spongy little girl.
I could talk about Barbra, who in the words of Fran Fine “is our leader.” I could talk about the importance of seeing Jewish humor, fame, and accomplishment in a sea of bubbly blonde Texan Baptist favoritism. We could stretch things and turn Nick Arnstein into an archetype for me enjoying the company of con men, if you like. But really the most pressing lesson from the most significant film of my childhood is this: Pretty girls win, not-pretty girls don’t. The world made it very clear, very quickly, which one I was. Mrs. Strakosh… you bitch.