Cher from Clueless was Definitely a Lesbian — Here’s Why
As a queer woman growing up, I rarely had positive and genuine representation on screen, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t often see aspects of myself and my sexuality in the films I watched. The clearest example of this, in my mind, is the lead character Cher from the classic 1995 teen rom-com Clueless, played by Alicia Silverstone. Cher is the embodiment of self-assured, cool femininity, and her portrayal as girly, intelligent, and socially skilled all at once was a big turning point in my often tumultuous relationship with femininity. Cher’s iconic lines really resonated with me, and rewatching the movie after coming to terms with my own sexuality, it is pretty clear to me that Cher is less a case of Shakespearean romance and more a brilliant example of compulsory heterosexuality that is likely familiar to every queer woman. Obviously, this is just one interpretation and an admittedly biased one at that, but I think there is some pretty damning evidence in the source material.
In case you’re short on time, I’ll start with the most obvious evidence in the form of a truly iconic line (one of many in Clueless). As Tai tells Cher —
“You’re a virgin who can’t drive.”
Need I continue? In case Cher’s truly horrendous driving doesn’t convince you, I have a few other arguments that might. This article is going to cover Cher’s disinterest in dating, the motivations behind her ‘attraction’ to the three men she interacts with in a romantic context, and her relationship with a new girl Tai.
Disinterest in dating
The most convincing evidence for a lesbian Cher is her constant disinterest in dating, specifically in dating high school boys. The boys she meets are, as she puts it, “like dogs; these nervous creatures that jump and slobber all over you,” and that “searching for a boy in high school is as useless as searching for meaning in a Pauly Shore movie.” It’s not that she’s not interested in romance or dating, in fact, she spends the entire movie setting up romances for her friends and even two of her teachers. She’s also interested in dating someone for herself but continues to push the deadline until she finds the right guy.
One scene that really called to me as I was questioning my sexuality was in the diner with Cher, Tai, and Dionne, when the former was questioning Cher about her virginity. Cher is immediately defensive, clarifying that while she has no shortage of offers, she “isn’t a prude, [she’s] just highly selective.” She likens her standards with men to her standards for accessories — “you see how I choose my shoes, and they only go on my feet!” This is not to say that anyone who chooses to wait for the ‘right person’ is gay or ace, but a big indicator for me was not wanting to get married and losing interest in dating as soon as it became a realistic possibility, something we also see Cher do.
Cher has a somewhat romantic plotline with three guys over the film, all of which are great examples of compulsory heterosexuality, or comp het. Comp het is a product of a heteronormative society, wherein queer people (lesbians in particular) feel pressured to perform straightness. Common experiences include ‘choosing’ crushes, quickly losing interest, or being exclusively attracted to unavailable men, like guys who are gay, older, or taken.
Relationships with men
The first guy Cher gets involved with is Elton (Jeremy Sisto), the popular ‘hot’ guy that Cher first tries to set up with Tai. To clarify, Cher is never shown to be into Elton, but nearly every other girl in the movie is. Elton is uninterested in Tai and is obviously trying to get Cher’s attention instead. She ends up getting a ride home from Elton (something she does not want to do), and when he tries to kiss her she storms out of the car with no plan to get home. She identifies Elton as a ‘safe’ guy for Tai to date, but doesn’t even notice his interest in her and clearly does not reciprocate his feelings at all, and in fact, is visibly repulsed by his attempts to seduce her.
The second guy Cher meets is someone she’s more interested in, a new student Christian (Justin Walker). She takes a liking to Christian because of his put-together style and his nonromantic interest towards her, so different from the dog-like behavior of other high school boys. She immediately makes the conscious decision to make him her boyfriend and employs all her tested tricks to get a guy’s attention. To the viewer, it’s pretty clear that Christian is more interested in getting invites to parties than in Cher, but she seems to miss all the signs that he’s gay and persists in her interest anyway. Cher decides that Christian is the guy that she’ll finally lose her virginity to, which goes predictably, with him being more interested in watching Some Like It Hot than sleeping with her. It isn’t until the next day when Dionne’s boyfriend Murray spells his sexuality out for her that she understands why her normal seduction techniques failed. Despite the fizzled romantic interest, Cher and Christian remain friends, bonding over common interests.
This attraction meets every metric of compulsory heterosexuality. Christian has traditionally feminine interests and features and is unavailable as a gay guy. She actively chooses to be attracted to him and seems to be seeking his validation rather than his romantic interest.
Cher’s final romantic plotline, and the happy ending of the movie, is her relationship with her (ex?) step-brother Josh (Paul Rudd). Cher spends the vast majority of the movie uninterested and actually actively avoiding Josh, treating him like her annoying older brother. Their relationship becomes less antagonistic after Cher helps Josh with his work for her father, but it isn’t until Tai takes a liking to him that she really looks at him differently. In fact, her feelings seem to turn on a dime after seeing Tai flirting with Josh, which makes her jealous for reasons she can’t place. After a few minutes, however, she has her grand epiphany —
”Oh my God, I love Josh!”
From both an in-universe character perspective and an exterior writing perspective, this revelation feels forced. Josh should, by all metrics, be unavailable to Cher — he’s older, seems to dislike her, and most importantly, he’s her stepbrother! The build-up to their relationship feels disingenuous and Cher has no interest in Josh beyond his potential relationship with Tai, with who she has spent most of the movie-obsessed with.
Cher and Tai
At this point, we have a fairly strong argument that Cher is uninterested in men, but that could point towards her being asexual, aromantic, or truly just incredibly picky. To complete the picture of Cher being a lesbian-coded character, we need to focus on her relationship with Tai.
Tai Frasier (Brittany Murphy) is a new transfer student with a unique style and personality compared to the other students at the upper-class California school. She immediately draws Cher’s attention, and Cher decides to take her under her wing to make her attractive and popular (very Wicked). Cher and Tai’s relationship proves Cher’s queerness in two ways.
First has more to do with Tai herself than Cher. Tai is a clearly queer-coded character (queer coding being the subtextual use of queer traits). She doesn’t wear makeup or do much with her hair, she wears flannels and more masculine or eccentric clothing, and she’s introduced as a character with much more experience than the others with drugs, alcohol, and sex. She even says to Cher and Dionne “I’ve never had straight friends before” (likely referencing drug use, but easily extended to sexuality). All signs point to Tai being bi or gay, and we know from Christian that Cher probably would not consciously pick up on those signals.
The second element of their relationship that is pertinent is how Cher reacts to Tai and her other friendships or relationships. From the beginning, Cher attempts to get Tai a boyfriend, which she sees as a status symbol. In fact, her decision of which boys Tai should pursue has nothing to do with Tai’s interest in them; rather, her decisions are based on how dating them would affect her social status (i.e. choosing rich kid Elton over stoner Travis). Cher’s real reactions come when Tai is genuinely interested in someone, especially if that interest means Tai valuing them over her.
Cher is visibly frustrated when Tai expresses a desire to date Josh, and the conflict that arises from that situation is the crux of the movie’s plot. From a screenwriting perspective, Cher’s relationship with Tai is far more important than her relationship with Josh. Her character development and motivation would be unchanged if Josh were written out of the story but would be entirely nonexistent if the same were done to Tai.
A pivotal sequence in the movie that highlights the shift in Cher and Tai’s friendship occurs after Tai’s ‘near-death experience’ at the mall. While it is easily inferred that Cher is irritated that Tai is taking the attention she usually garners, the truth is a bit more layered. First of all, Cher claims credit for Tai’s popularity, so when Tai begins to develop a social life separate from her, she feels isolated from her new friend/project. Secondly, this is the first time in the movie that Tai is not focusing her attention on Cher. She’s flirting with the guys at the mall, which clearly annoys Cher, and after she and Christian rush over to stop Tai from falling, Tai directs all her gratitude to Christian and ignores Cher. This is what the real conflict in their relationship is — for the first time since they’ve met, Cher is not the center of Tai’s world, and Cher is immediately jealous.
Obviously, this could just be a sign of friendship, especially if Cher was simply a jealous person, but this is really not the case. In fact, her long-time best friend Dionne has a boyfriend who Cher disapproves of, but Cher is never jealous when Dionne spends time with him instead of her. Even at the party in the Hills, Cher is more irritated with Murray’s childish antics than upset with Dionne, and even happily chooses to leave the party with Tai alone when her father calls with a curfew ultimatum. Clearly, Cher’s feelings for Tai are unique, even when compared to her feelings for Josh. Cher spends a full car ride alone with Josh and a girl he is romantically involved with and displays no hint of jealousy — in fact, her only feelings of jealousy regarding Josh involved a potential relationship with Tai.
When the whole film is added up, it seems pretty obvious to me that Cher was far more interested in dating Tai than she ever was in Josh. I’m sure many people will remain unconvinced, so I want to spend the last section of this article talking about the importance of queer interpretation of media and the need for greater canonical queer representation in the future.
Queer representation in the media
As someone who loves to talk, read, and write about potential queer identity for nearly every character I come across, I get asked a lot why it’s a topic that interests me so much. After all, the movies/books/tv shows are already written, and the character is straight, why try to rewrite them now? The answer comes down to something that rings true again and again in the world of media critique — representation. As a young queer woman, I rarely see people who look, act, and love like me on screen, especially when it comes to characters I look up to. I loved Cher as a kid when I first watched the film, and after a recent rewatch, I love her still. She is a rare character, one who is allowed to be feminine and flawed at the same time, and one who shows definitive growth while remaining who she is. I watched her portray many of the same feelings I felt as a questioning lesbian and directly share my experience with compulsory heterosexuality.
It’s true that I can never change the way Cher is written or the way Clueless ends (though I will always roll my eyes when she ends up with, may I remind you, her STEP BROTHER), but media and other forms of art have never been made to be interpreted one way. The ways a movie makes you feel, and the reasons you do or don’t resonate with a particular character are completely valid. Media literacy is a vital skill in the 21st century, so thinking critically about the content we consume is always a worthwhile activity.
Seeing lesbians and other wlw on screen (honestly, mostly on TikTok) was so important to my ability to understand and accept who I am. Millions of young women, especially queer women and women of color, are underrepresented on their screens, and when they are seen they are rarely positive three-dimensional portrayals. I have learned an incredible amount about LGBT issues and my own identity through critical analysis of sexuality on film, and I intend to continue to do so until there is representation on screen that doesn’t need to be strictly interpreted to resonate with queer, disabled, and POC viewers.
Queer coding and queer baiting are all over the movies and shows we watch, and when it comes to Clueless, the message is pretty obvious. So, is Cher Horowitz straight?
“Ugh, as if!”
Resources and Further Reading
Bendix, Trish. “Why Cher From Clueless Was Important for My Femme Lesbian Identity.” *BYRDIE*. June 07, 2021. https://www.byrdie.com/femme-lesbians-cher-clueless
Gruen, Hannah. “Cher from Clueless Was Totally Lesbian-Coded.” *Her Campus*. October 23, 2018. https://www.hercampus.com/school/bryn-mawr/cher-clueless-was-totally-lesbian-coded.
Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” *Signs*, vol. 5, no. 4, 1980, pp. 631–660. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3173834.
