Quick art history lesson: an icon is a kind of religious image of saints and other key biblical figures. The oldest icons are over a thousand years old, and surprisingly, still look pretty much the same. But there’s one icon so hard to define, so hard to pin down to one look, category, or even profession, that we’ll call her an icon of the hustle—or even just, ‘Cher.’ The Bob Mackie outfit she wore to the 1988 Oscars? Iconic. (Mind you, she won.) This video of Cher doing a one-woman rendition of West Side Story? Iconic. Her mail-order gothic furniture catalog? Iconic. And, 48 years after the first episode of the Sonny & Cher Show aired, she’s still at it, now using her iconic Twitter feed to air her most salient ideas. This includes notes on beauty and style—she has a lot to say about those! Read on for her most iconic takes.
On growing older:
“You know my mother told me once: You know, you’re not the most beautiful, you’re not the most talented. You won’t always be the youngest, but you are special and there’s something more important about that.”1
“When I was six years old I felt like I was 35 and now that I’m 35 I feel like I’m about 14 years old.”1
“My telephone rang and [it] was the director of Witches of Eastwick. So he said, 'I just wanted to call and tell you that I don't want you in my movie and Jack Nicholson and I think you're too old and you're not sexy.' Good morning, 40! So, I was like, 'You didn't find me under a rock. I was nominated for an Academy Award for Silkwood. And I got the Cannes Film Festival award for best actress for Mask. So, goodbye!'"2
“I’d like to look really great for as long as I can. If some people think that makes me terminally vain, then yes, I am that.”3
“I think Meryl is doing it great. The stupid bitch is doing it better than all of us!”4
On plastic surgery:
“People should do what makes them happy. Frankly, when I saw my face 10 feet tall in close-ups on a movie screen, I wanted my nose done because it really bothered me. My teeth were straightened and brought out with braces and a retainer.”3
“If I want to put my tits on my back, it’s nobody’s business but my own.”4
On her style:
“I would do exactly what I wanted to, no matter what. I mean… People can say I dressed like a fool, I don't have good taste. It's not about good or bad clothes; it's about freedom.”5
“I’m not destined to be a rich woman. I’m destined to be a woman who makes a lot of money and never has any. I’ve made millions and millions and millions of dollars and I just spend it.”1
“The only things that are important are work, children and men… As long as I can have all the clothes I want.”1
“I could do it a lot safer, I could do it a lot more planned, but that’s just not me. Careful, to me, is way down on my list of things to be.”6
“You know, people said that I wasn't serious because of the way I dressed. But it's expression. It's like when you put your makeup on, you're an artist painting a canvas. And when you dress, you're expressing yourself in whatever way you feel like. You should never be inhibited by what people expect you to do.”7
“It was a deal where I hadn’t worn dresses, and then someone picked up the thought that I never wore dresses, and then someone asked me, ‘Well, do you wear dresses?’ And I just said, ‘No, I don’t.’ I didn’t wear them, until I saw the Pope, and I had to wear one.”6
“It's not bullshit to express yourself in the way you want to, and it helps girls to not be afraid to express themselves.”7
“I feel badly for [men] in some ways. Well, I can wear pants and a dress, you know? It goes all the way in.”6
“Until you’re ready to look foolish, you’ll never have the possibility of being great.”8
On skincare:
“I never had any serious skin problems until I was doing The Sonny & Cher Show, and my face was in makeup for 18 hours at a time… I looked like Freddie from A Nightmare on Elm Street.”3
“In the early ‘70s I developed what is called adult acne. With Dr. Arnold Klein in Beverly Hills I began using Retin-A to treat chronic cystic acne… But what I learned is what everyone else has discovered over the past couple years: that Retin-A also acts as a de-aging agent.”3
“My skincare routine is very eclectic. I don’t stick to one particular product, I just have things that I love from different people. I have a friend, her name is Dr. Barbara Sturm, and she makes an eye cream and face wash that I love. I love Jan Marini products too. I also have Proactiv products that I love.”9
“I stopped wearing makeup to go out. And I know that I really like to wear makeup, but I also want to be able to not have to. I started wearing less makeup on stage, too. I used to go for an hour and put makeup on. Now I don’t. I still want to look really attractive and I still like to get dressed up, but it’s a terrible thing to know that you have to look a certain way for people to like you.”1
On fragrance:
“I like vanilla, it’s just a girl thing I think, but I also very much like something that’s spicy. I imagine there are people, I know there are people, who don’t want to have anything on them and I cannot even go to that place.”10
On Cher hair:
“My hair is not that important… When I did Mask, they asked me to make my hair from black to red. The guy that turned it from black to red, I don’t know, didn’t have two brain cells to rub together, and he did a really terrible job. It started breaking, and I went into a wig. From there, it went short because my hair was really terrible… I went to my hairdresser and just said, ‘Why don’t we do this: we’ll do it black on one side, black on the other, and leave it blonde in the middle. He said, ‘No, that would be terrible,’ and I said, ‘Well the worst that can happen is I won’t like it.’”6
On caring for her body:
“I never had to worry about a pound until I was 50. I could eat whatever I wanted. But after that, you have to work out.”11
“I’ve been screaming at the top of my lungs at my family, ‘Work out! Work out! Old age is coming!’ At some point you will need the strength. Who would have ever thought you would get this old?”4
“I’ve killed myself in the gym to have this body. It isn’t like I have some amazing secret that nobody else has.”12
“I’m working out now with this wonderful guy who comes to my house at eight in the morning. Yesterday we worked out for two and a half hours, and we do a little bit of everything. We do aerobics, weight lifting, we do stretching, and all kinds of stuff. I love that, and I really need that. Not only do I like it because when I look in the mirror, I like what I see, but it makes me feel better. It makes me feel calmer.”6
“I tried running for years and hated it. Your breasts are going everywhere, your ovaries are going everywhere, and you’re jarring your shins. It’s not the greatest thing.”3
Collage by ITG
