Abstract
The March 18, 1991 issue of People magazine featured a cover story on Sandra The full head-shot photo showed a beautiful, seemingly ageless woman, while the headline copy read, Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee. The refrain is borrowed from a song in both the stage play and 1977 film Grease, which lampoons various high-school types of the 1950s, including Rizzo, the hardboiled, wisecracking, female sexual hood, and (no coincidence there), the naive, sweet cheerleader.' At a pajama party Rizzo and the other Pink Ladies try to teach Sandy to drink and to smoke, but she promptly gets sick. Rizzo dons a blond wig and begins her song satirizing the representations of sexuality in the fifties, Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee, lousy with virginity, won't go to bed 'till I'm legally wed, I can't, I'm Sandra Dee. The Dee persona is instantly recognizable to audiences of the present and becomes a form of shorthand to convey a specific cultural trope. These lyrics, which celebrate the innocence of the Dee image, were strangely juxtaposed on that People cover with the subhead, Years of Incest, Anorexia and Alcoholism.' The dichotomy between Dee's public and private personas, underscored by the People cover, also functions as a metaphor for the 1950s. Dee is remembered as the embodiment of the virginal, perky, uncomplicated, adolescent girl of the 195os. She is a reminder of a time in the recesses of collective memory when there was no incest, violence against women, eating disorders, substance abuse, or sex outside of marriage. Of course, no such golden age existed. The collective image of the 1950s reflects what Stephanie Coontz has referred to as the nostalgia trap: the tendency to simplify and idealize a past reality.3 As Joanne Meyerowitz has demonstrated, postwar popular ideology was more varied and complex than the popular portrait painted by Betty Friedan. There has been a peculiar trend, based in part by the rhetoric of conservative politicians, to believe that life really was simpler and less complicated then.4 Yet, Dee's story reveals precisely the opposite.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
