When I open my post-secondary educational institution, Feminist Unlimited Knowledge University (FUK U for short), the first course I’ll teach will be about Cher. Maybe she’ll even give a guest lecture, striding to the front of the class in a sequined Bob Mackie gown, and pointing to a whiteboard that contains one of her great self-descriptions: “I’m a messy icon.” It’s true, she is a messy icon. This is why we love her. But she is also an icon who is a beacon of strength, of humour, of creativity.

Why Cher, you may ask? Why now? If you haven’t noticed, there’s a Cherevival going on. In short order, she’ll be releasing a greatest hits record and an autobiography that necessitates two volumes, thanks to “a life too immense for only one book.” As well, Cher will be inducted – finally – into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Yes, the woman who has had No. 1 hits in seven decades, a record rivalled only by the Rolling Stones, is not yet in the pantheon of rock gods. That is about to change. At the age of 78, she is at the pinnacle: She stands above the world of mere mortals in a pair of thigh-high boots, laughing at those who once mocked her.

The first lesson in our module will be called Outlast Your Haters. If Cher’s story tells us anything, it is the importance of self-belief in the face of doubt. Raised in hardscrabble circumstances in California, she was a self-described “beatnik toddler” and “strange little girl” who somehow knew she was destined for great things. An undiagnosed dyslexic and high-school dropout, she was blessed with confidence and a glorious alto voice that, early on, some disc jockeys found alarmingly masculine. She hooked up with a pageboyed playboy with a knack for songwriting (that would be Sonny Bono). She loved him, playfully taunted him on their popular TV variety show and rebelled when he tried to control her finances and her destiny. She couldn’t write a cheque without his co-signature. She was a free spirit in a gilded cage.

When she left Sonny, she was high and dry. In fact, Cher’s been washed up more times than a crab on Santa Monica Beach. Every time, she’s clawed her way to higher ground. She was determined to make her way as an actor, despite the doubts of everyone in Hollywood. “A lot of movie people said I wasn’t serious enough,” she wrote in her 1998 book Cher: The First Time. “… But there comes a time in your life where, if you’re going to move forward, you must stop taking no for an answer.”

She scrubbed her face of makeup to play a blue-collar lesbian in the movie Silkwood, and when her name appeared alongside Meryl Streep’s in trailers for the movie, audiences laughed. Were they still laughing when she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar? They’d definitely stopped by 1988, when she won her Best Actress Oscar for Moonstruck, a film containing an immortal line that doubles as middle finger to her critics: “In time you’ll drop dead and I’ll come to your funeral in a red dress.”

Our second lesson should be popular with students, for a good reason: On the syllabus we’re calling it, You’ve Got a Voice, So Use it. Cher, the girl who got in fights with Sister Bernadette at school over Catholic orthodoxy, became the young woman whose “smart mouth” annoyed her husband, Sonny. But a smart mouth can be a tool, a weapon, a shield. A map to riches, even. When her record producers brought her the song Believe, Cher spoke up. The song’s narrator was whiny. Why not have her triumph over heartbreak in one verse? She suggested the lines, “I’ve had time to think it through/and maybe I’m too good for you.” The song became her biggest hit, a post-breakup anthem and dance-floor smash that sold more than 11 million copies.

This particular lesson will be useful for young women who may have trouble accessing their inner “glamorous bitch,” as Cher once described herself quite perceptively. Immersing ourselves in the rebellious energy of the woman who admitted she had “a really hard time with authority,” we’ll look at the ways Cher has sidestepped network censors and battled dictatorial directors in defence of her own truth.

We’ll also study some of the great interviews that our subject has given, in which she refused to accept societal norms, boring expectations and dumb questions. For example, her response to a journalist who asked if she’d had too much cosmetic surgery: “If I want to put my tits on my back it’s nobody’s business but my own.” Or this comeback to an interviewer who patronizingly noted that Cher was nicer than he expected: “I’m very gentle, I’m really sweet, and if you f–k with me I’ll mop the floor with you.” This class will conclude with the seminal moment when Cher delivered a hard truth to David Letterman’s face, that he is, indeed, an “asshole.” Popcorn will be provided.

Of course, no feminist understanding of the greatness of Cher can ignore the lessons of financial independence, which we will parse in our lecture, I’ve Got Me, Babe. Ever since she pulled Sonny’s greedy fingers off her chequebook, Cher has modelled to young women everywhere the importance of standing on your own two stilettos, and doing it to a disco beat. “When the money’s gone/No more caviar/Will you eat fast food in a beat up car?” she sings in her No. 1 hit from 2003, When the Money’s Gone. This is a woman who knows about rebuilding from the ground up. When she was a single mother struggling to provide for her two kids, Chaz Bono and Elijah Blue Allman, she played dingy nightclubs and Caesars Palace when Las Vegas was still a backwater. She was the queen of hustle culture before it had a name.

A propulsive work ethic has kept Cher in spangled headdresses and allowed her to cut the strings that tied her to the patriarchy. It has also, as we’ll examine, given her a deeper and richer relationship to the men she allowed into her life (many of them, like her current 38-year-old beau, decades younger). In particular, we’ll concentrate on the famous 1996 Dateline interview Jane Pauley conducted with Cher, in which she likened men to a luxury, a bit like dessert. “I think men are the coolest,” Cher said. “But you don’t really need them to live. My mom said to me, ‘You know, sweetheart, one day you should settle down and marry a rich man.’ And I said, ‘Mom, I am a rich man.’”

In our final lecture, If I Could Turn Back Time, we’ll focus on Cher’s adaptability. While outspoken and strong-willed, the superstar has shown a refreshing ability to change with the times. She retired her hit 1973 song Half-Breed, for example, realizing that the lyrics were dated and offensive. And she changed her stance on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction, too. Last year, on The Kelly Clarkson Show, she told the host “they can just go and you-know-what themselves,” but she later backtracked and said she would accept the honour, warning “I’m going to have some words to say.”

We can only hope she’ll show up to the ceremony in an outrageous outfit to rival the one she wore to the Oscars in 1986, when Bob Mackie encased in her a sequined mohawk and glittering bralette. Cher’s role as the protective biker mom in the film Mask had been snubbed at nomination time, and she strolled onto the Oscar stage to give out an award, looking like the diva offspring of Maleficent and a black widow spider. She fixed her stony gaze on the Hollywood squares who had spurned her, and said: “As you can see, I did receive my Academy booklet on how to dress like a serious actress.”

Perhaps her most significant and heartwarming reversal relates to her eldest son, Chaz. Both Cher and Chaz have acknowledged the tumultuousness of their relationship: Cher pushed her child to be more feminine, was disturbed by his sexuality and was not initially supportive of his gender transition. She even told him, “You’ll be the butt of every joke on late-night television.”

They were estranged for a year, while Cher worked through her emotions. With time came healing, and mother and son reconciled. (The singer has ended a financial conservatorship battle with her other son, Elijah Blue, who struggles with drug use and mental health issues.) Cher is now a loud and proud advocate for the rights of transgender people, using her public platform to advocate for greater understanding and compassion. It’s not easy for anyone to admit they’re wrong: Imagine how much harder it must be if you’re Cher. Yet she continues to learn, and grow.

That’s my lesson plan for the first year of Cher Studies at Feminist Unlimited Knowledge University. Understandably, some parents footing the tuition bill might balk at this scholastic journey, so the course will appear on official transcripts as “Introduction to Economics.”  

Any brave young person with a curious mind is welcome to jump aboard the Cheravan. There’s room for everyone. 

A version of this article appeared in the October/November 2024 issue with the headline ‘The Zeitgeist’, p. 35.