Hard Truth: Clueless Is an Entirely Different Movie When You Watch It 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.