Thursday , July 22, 2010
Style Icons: Punky Brewster + Helen Hunt in Girls Just Want to Have Fun
With the exception of Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan, the sharpest-dressed movie babe of my youth is probably Helen Hunt as Lynne Stone in the oft-forgotten and beyond-awesome Girls Just Want to Have Fun. Lynne's an irrepressibly zany yet totally non-annoying Catholic-school girl who devotes class time to cutting up photobooth pix and pasting her head onto Eddie Van Halen's body; her frequent flashes of ingenuity include breaking into a solo rendition of "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" to help Baby Carrie Bradshaw escape choir practice, as well as transforming her school uniform into a semi-trashy pleather-and-plaid ensemble with help of a little Velcro ("the coolest invention of the 20th century" after the walkman and Tab, according to Lynne Stone).
Apart from that slightly disastrous fashion misstep, Lynne's wardrobe is so geniusly styled, mostly because the costume designers had enough smarts to forgo that early-'80s "generic punk" thing in favor of a look I can only classify as "foxy goofball." Because the Internet is stupid, and because certain technological limitations preclude me from screencapping the hell out of Girls Just Want to Have Fun like I did with that amazing Dirty Dancing post from yesterday, it's damned near impossible for me to present a complete defense of Lynne Stone's weirdo hotness. Like, in the above photo, you can't even tell that she's wearing a coon-skin cap and some insane jumpsuit thing you'd probably only otherwise see in prison. And I can't show you her outrageously gigantic plastic blue dinosaur barrettes, or her standing-on-end hair in that scene where she whisks SJP away to the DTV dance-off. In this vid, at least, you can check out her giant-bug beret and hugely oversized top with most of the back cut out. As an added bonus, you get a quick glimpse at a surprisingly adorable Shannon Doherty (probably the only time she's ever been likable at all, right?).
So you'll probably just have to see/revisit Girls Just Want to Have Fun sometime soon and go all gaga for "foxy goofball" on your own. I watched it last night and totally got teary-eyed when Lynne rides in on the horse-drawn carriage at the end, thus fulfilling her dream of hosting the music-news slot on DTV. And it wasn't just some stupid moment of earthquake-shaken fragility at work - I'm really just that much of a sucker for weird girls making their most wild/dorky wishes come true.
Had I been way more on the ball about life as a child, my younger self would've channeled Lynne Stone as number-one style idol instead of occasionally veering into lame-o Punky Brewster territory. Oddly, my most Punky-esque phase hit sometime in late-adolescence, when I started doing this thing of dyeing my hair magenta, threading my sky-blue Converse low-tops with rainbow laces, and overaccessorizing the hell out of every outfit (mostly with the help of gaudy plastic necklaces and monster-sized heart-shaped rings). Ridic for sure, but it was probably the most flamboyantly I've ever dressed, excepting that time I had my fifth-grade class photo taken wearing a white-denim mini-skirt and oversized peach sweatshirt with raspberry- and silver-sequin lightning bolts across the front (really, Mom?). Flamboyance is good; it suggests a certain joie de vivre, and joie de vivre is a very nogoodforme quality indeed. Plus, those stupid shoelaces once inspired a boy to serenade me with "She's a Rainbow", and that's a very beautiful thing for a 17-year-old girl.
Truly, though, Punky Brewster is an irritating little scamp, and it's probably no accident that I've typoed her as "Pukey Brewster" all throughout this entry. By far the best thing about her is that she inspired somebody to subtitle the below video with some magically bizarro commentary - like, when Punky makes her debut appearance, we get a very excited "There is She!!" flashing across the screen. Then, when we meet Cherie for the first time, we're informed that "In Brazil, she is Katia." And, as Punky breaks down her wacky philosophy on footwear, the subtitles shout with joy: "Great: She is not the average human being!" So true! Thank you, Pukey, for being the girl who turned my world around. That episode with the bad girls who wanted you to try "a little nose candy" in the treehouse really got to me too, no joke.
Tags: bugs, dinosaurs, Dirty Dancing, early '80s nostalgia, earthquakes, foxy goofball, Girls Just Want to Have Fun, Helen Hunt, joie de vivre, Just Say No, Madonna, Punky Brewster, Rolling Stones, Sarah Jessica Parker, style icons
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I love it! I love it all! I never want to be anything in this life but a foxy goofball.
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By Laura
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