Off the Charts: Cher

The diva's diva

By Newt Briggs

Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.

--Oscar Wilde

It's difficult, in this age of airbrushed pop stars and tabloid romance, to account for the irrefutable celebrity of Cher. Cher who dropped out of high school at 16, who began her music career by performing in bowling alleys, who married Gregg Allman at Caesar's Palace and then wept hysterically on the ride home, who briefly fronted a doomed arena rock band called Black Rose, who singlehandedly anointed fashion libertine Bob Mackie, who named her would-be lesbian daughter Chastity after a movie in which she had to repel the advances of a frisky lesbian, who prostituted her fame in an infomercial for hair-care products after winning an Oscar for her role in Moonstruck, who humped heavy artillery in front of a platoon of seamen in the video for "If I Could Turn Back Time," who announced that she had communicated with ex-husband Sonny Bono after he was killed in a skiing accident, who is nothing short of a model for What Not To Do and yet has steadfastly maintained her renown for more than four decades--indeed, she is a wonder.

"She always had a mystique about her," Bono said of Cher before his alpine demise. "You look at her, and you just gotta wonder, `What the hell is she?'"

A diva. A disaster. A divaster. Remember what she said to close her highly publicized "farewell" tour in 2003? Announcing that she didn't want to be touring with "boobs down to [her] kneecaps," she declared her intention to pass the torch down to Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez. Then she reconsidered. "You girls are just coming up," she said--no doubt with a grand flourish of sequins and feathers and see-through spandex. "Follow this, you bitches!"

Here's why they won't--or can't.

Britney Spears: There's no question that Britney has endured her fair share of public shame--the 55-hour Vegas wedding, her crippling love of snack foods and a series of paparazzi photographs in which she appears to be fellating her classy new beau, backup dancer and wife-beater-sporting father of two Kevin Federline. Yet for all her personal hurly-burly, Spears doesn't seem to have the pluck or ironic sense of self that has propelled Cher through the worst of times. A performance at the Mirage in the early `90s highlighted Cher's good-humored vanity. After ascending to the stage in a gown that appeared to have been designed by the Marquis De Sade, Cher was greeted by a raucous standing ovation. Her response: "Oh, come on, you're not really that excited." Faced with the same situation, Spears no doubt would have gone all Sally Field and shouted, "You love me! You really love me!"

Jennifer Lopez: Lopez, certainly the creative superior of Spears, also seems a more natural heir to Cher's diva-hood. Observe the similarities: Both have cultivated blue-collar images--Cher as the snarky little semi-orphan girl from El Centro, Calif. and Lopez as "Jenny from the block." Both have released No. 1 singles but put their movie careers before their music. Both have paraded their relationships through the gossip rags--Cher with Bono, Allman and a young Val Kilmer and Lopez with Puff Daddy, Ben Affleck and Marc Anthony. Both have subjected themselves multiple rhinoplasty operations. Perhaps most importantly, both have nicknames that have, for all intents and purposes, become their public identities. The distinction between the two hinges on Cher's complete lack of humility. As Steve Wiecking wrote in The Stranger in 1999, "Cher can call David Letterman `an asshole' and Madonna `a cunt' and sill have your mother just really hoping that she finds happiness." J-Lo could only hope for such reverence.