I have never understood why I loved Clueless so much.
On paper it makes no sense. I wasn’t a wealthy teenager in Beverly Hills. I didn’t have a computerized closet.
And yet, of all the movies from the 90s, Clueless is the one that stuck.
For years I assumed it was nostalgia. Recently I think I figured out the real reason.
I am Cher.
Not the fashion…well, maybe a bit of the fashion. The worldview.
Stay with me.
For most of the movie, Cher genuinely believes she understands people. She’s observant. Thoughtful. She notices things. She wants to help. The problem isn’t that she’s wrong about everything, it’s that she’s running every person she meets through her own filter. Everyone becomes a version of what she would do, want, or need in their position.
The movie doesn’t end with her becoming smarter.
It ends with her realizing that everyone around her has an inner life she hadn’t bothered to imagine.
Tai isn’t a project. Josh isn’t a project. Her teachers aren’t a project. The people in her life aren’t supporting characters in the story of Cher. They’re just…people.
It’s such a simple realization. I missed it over my 42 years.
This week I took our cat to the vet.
I found myself watching her work and thinking, for the first time, not why would someone choose this, but what must she see when she looks at an animal? What does she love about it? How many years has she spent learning things I’ll never know?
The question used to be: why would someone do that?
Now it’s: how lucky that someone does.
I keep noticing this shift everywhere. At my daughter’s recital. In conversations with other parents. Everywhere.
I’ve spent most of my life fascinated by people. What I’m starting to realize is that I was often fascinated the way an anthropologist is fascinated: look at those humans, humaning again, what a curious species. Interested, yes. But from a distance. Explaining rather than appreciating.
But what was lost on me is the fact that I’m also a human, humaning.
A few years ago, my daughter announced that she was special.
I said, without thinking: “No one is special. We’re all unique.”
She looked at me like I had said something insane. I couldn’t explain it at the time.
I think what I meant was that different separates, and unique belongs. The world doesn’t work because one person sees everything. It works because everyone notices something. Some people notice animals. Some people notice suffering. Some people notice when a room feels off. Some people remember birthdays and that turns out to matter enormously.
We’re all carrying a piece of it.
I spent years thinking I related to Clueless because I was the girl who saw things other people missed.
Turns out I relate more to the girl who finally noticed that everyone else was worth seeing too.
Which is a little inconvenient. Because now I have to go back and re-examine years of interactions with the understanding that I was, in fact, the oblivious one.
As if.