He's so damn cute that I'm willing to
forgive him for hanging out with dumb jocks.
In the Jake camp: One friend claimed that she almost yelled out loud in her office that Jake Ryan beats Lloyd Dobler hands down. It was her strong opinion that "No whiny kickboxer will ever get away with holding a boom box up in my front yard." She also noted that Eric Stoltz from "Some Kind of Wonderful" didn't even warrant a mention as "he was pretty pitiful." (My note here: At least he looked better in that 80s movie than he did in his other 80s movie, "Mask.")
The two looks of Eric Stoltz in the 1980s...
And then there were the naysayers on Jake Ryan's unwavering hotness: Of the negative Jake comments received from my female friends, he was called "monosyllabic" and "the kind of guy who made fun of me for having a mustache." Of course, leaping to Jake's defense, I insisted that Jake just wouldn't do that kind of thing. Sure, his musclehead friends might, but please, Jake is a sensitive and caring man. However, the response was that I was "delusional."
It should be noted that the aforementioned mustache comment set off a chain of sad junior high school memories, which, aside from at least one of us being told she had a mustache, reminded two others of us (ahem, including me) that we were victims of very bad haircuts in 6th grade. Speaking for myself here, it involved a miserably trained stylist at the Hair Cuttery, who sheared me like a sheep and with about just as much finesse and stylistic ability as a rural farmer in the Falkland Islands. Thus, I looked so much like a boy (with the traditional 80s "butt cut") that I recently discovered that my mother put one of my photos from that time period into my brother's photo album (to her credit, I was also wearing a "painter's cap")...
I didn't have a "Willow" painter's cap,
but I would have worn it if I'd had it.
Anyway, it was really bad. So bad that one day as I walked down the hall in 6th grade, I overheard one of the most popular guys in school ask another one, "Is that a boy or a girl?" My god, talk about psychological trauma!! I was, however, very pleased to find out today that two of my most attractive friends had the exact comment made about them after receiving short haircuts at the same age.
But enough about such things... moving back to the topic of interest here: who is the top 80s boyfriend?? Here were the other suggestions (aside from Jake and Lloyd, of course) with one vote each:
1. Patrick Dempsey in "Can't Buy Me Love" ---
Positive comments: the "girl with the spiral perm" was someone to emulate and Patrick Dempsey still looks good on "Grey's Anatomy"
Negative comment: Patrick Dempsey was "lame then and now."
2. Tom Cruise in "Top Gun" ---
I think Tom Cruise is a huge flake, but God, he looks hot here.
Positive comment: Please refer to the photo above.
Negative comments: One friend was "very skeeved out by the 'Take My Breathe Away' scene." Tom Cruise is gross in anything. In two words: "Oprah" and "TOMKAT."
3. Val Kilmer in "Top Gun" ---
Positive comment: "If the Ice Man was looking for a 9th grader, I was it!"
Negative comment: Val Kilmer is now "pudgy and weird."
INDEED! Look at him now!
Val, what happened to you?!?
(He almost looks like a drunken Baldwin brother here)
4. Patrick Swayze in "Dirty Dancing" ---
Positive comment: "Nobody puts Baby in a corner!!"
Negative comments: Cheese-o-rama. He wore black Capezio dance shoes, and he looks like he's made out of plastic now...
His skin is so tight, he has a permagrin.
5. Ducky in "Pretty in Pink" ---
He kind of looks like the horse-faced "Tears for Fears" singer.
Positive comment: He's the underdog who liked the nerdy girl.
Negative comments: Are you kidding? He's unattractive and none of us wanted to see him naked. He's the ultimate "I just want to be friends" guy.
And finally, with two votes:
6. Judd Nelson in "The Breakfast Club" ---
Postive comments: Forever the high school rebel. There was something sexy about that "bandana-around- the-ankle-badness."
Negative comments: He probably would give you an STD, he smoked too much, and he "looked like he was 35 years old when he was supposed to be in high school."
And finally, there is only one 1980s John Hughes heartbreaker missing from this list: Andrew McCarthy. I guess none of us liked him. I never really found him cute anyway...
I never really thought Andrew McCarthy looked like
Martin Short until I saw the picture of him on the left.
Off to do Arabic homework now. Bummer.
3 comments:
VAL??? What happened to you?
And PS (Patrick Swayze)now looks like Eric Stoltz in MASK.
Also, after professing my desire to be Cindy Mancini (Amanda Peterson) in Can't Buy Me Love, a flurry of emails citing her near death experience with cancer and her life of drug use led me to spend the remainder of my afternoon googling her for the THS (True Hollywood Story).
Alas, it appears Cindy lives a quiet normal life in Napa Valley with her husband and two kids.
Ah...i love the 80s...and this blog! The fact that Jake Ryan picked the girl with the short haircut--always gave me hope. Me... with a history of pixie cuts and REAL (non-spiral) perms.
Well, I had a short hair cut in 5th grade and on more than one occasion was mistaken for a boy. One painfully vivid moment was at the B. Alman's cosmetic counter when the overly nice sales lady told my brother Anthony that he should be happy to have an "older brother" who was so nice to him. Anthony, who was 5 at the time was like, "um lady, that's my older SISTER" and rolled his eyes. Enough said.
Yeah, I had a cruch on Andrew McCarthy, despite the fact that he looks like Martin Short and treated Molly Ringwald like crap in Pretty in Pink. Tell me again WHY people DON'T think Jake Ryan is the perfect man?
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