So, okay. Picture me in 1995. I am smart and opinionated and, in retrospect, maybe even kind of cute. But I’m also a teenage girl, which means I’m beset with insecurities, plagued by doubts and acne and various food issues. My high school English teacher has just taught a rather risqué unit on Woody Allen, and I am transfixed. The neuroses? The self-deprecation? The existential angst? All explored for jokes? Jewish humor felt more religious to me than anything I’d ever learned in Hebrew school.  I wasn’t the first teenage girl to be so turned on by Woody (he and Soon-Yi were out of the closet by then), but my connection really did feel spiritual.  It’s a shame, then, that so many of the female characters in his films—as iconic and brilliant as they were—felt foreign to me. Perhaps this was because I was too short to ever look good in menswear.  Or maybe it was due to disappointment in the realization that even a loser schlemiel wants a shiksa goddess on screen.

If a great deal of Woody’s love interests weren’t my soul sisters, the female Jewish characters I saw portrayed in pop culture were perhaps too much of a kind. There was my beloved Barbra, of course, (patron saint of Jewish theater ladies and cross-dressers everywhere), and a few contemporary types that maybe hit a little too close to home:  in film there was Baby Houseman who giggled awkwardly when limber sex god Patrick Swayze caressed her armpit. On TV there was zany neat freak Monica Geller, who always seemed hopped up on too much Central Perk caffeine; and there was also matronly Andrea Zuckerman, who spent her days editing the West Beverly Blaze while her friends hung out and did fun rich kid things.  These ladies all had their charms, they evolved and grew and slept with handsome goys, but none of them were gonna win “Most Desirable Female” at any MTV awards shows.

So what a revelation it was to see Clueless (No. 24 on Tablet’s list of Greatest Jewish Films), which I initially thought would be just another mildly diverting teen movie, starring that girl from the Aerosmith videos (who I later learned was also a card-carrying tribe member). Pure escapism. Here was this Beverly Hills queen bee with shiny blonde hair and a perfect nose and self-confidence oozing out her otherwise perfectly clear pores. I noted that we had a couple of things in common–I too was a subpar driver who was saving myself for Luke Perry. But overall, Cher had the glow of someone who found Ren & Stimpy way existential—Woody Allen was not on her radar. She was the total opposite of me, in fact, right down to her aversion to college radio crybaby music. Cher’s life was too perfect to fully appreciate Radiohead!

And then, halfway through the movie, Cher’s teacher Mr. Hall (played by Wallace Shawn, himself a Jewish character actor legend) called her “Ms. Horowitz.” It dawned on me. She was one of us—me and Monica and Andrea and Yentl. Her faith wasn’t discussed explicitly on screen, and at one point Cher’s report card even says “Cher Hamilton,” a nod to the heroine in director—and fellow Jew—Amy Hecklering’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High. As Cher might say, Whatever.  Aside from one Rolling Stone review that used the less ethnic version of her name, this perfect, Noxzema commercial model of a girl was decisively known to adoring teenage girls (and boys!) everywhere as Cher Horowitz.

I’ve read that Cher is considered a JAP, one of the most insidious stereotypes of young Jewish women that also has a hint of truth to it. Thing is, Cher sort of was a modern day Jewish princess. She was Jane Austen’s Emma reincarnated as high school royalty. She made use of her daddy’s credit card, procuring a killer collection of mini-kilts that were stored in an electronically operated closet the likes of which I hadn’t seen since the bedroom of the villainess in Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.  She whined and pouted and totally bugged when she didn’t get her way, and she was the epitome of hedonism and superficiality—at first.

But Cher was also an exemplar of the totally decent kind of Jewish person I aspired to be. She may not have been the smartest girl in school, but she was an excellent negotiator—a Jewish cliché that I responded to, being assertively-challenged myself. She helped out at home, making sure her father took his meds and stuck to a low cholesterol diet. She was loyal to her diverse and fabulous group of friends (let’s especially give a shout out to Dionne for putting Yiddish—“I’m kvelling”—back into modern day slang). Her plots and schemes and makeovers reeked of self-interest, but she was never slick or sleazy about them–her heart was ultimately in the right place.  From her more-clueless-than-thou friend Tai, to the residents of Pismo Beach to whom she donated caviar and athletic equipment, she wanted to help people. And let’s not forget Josh. Serious, mopey, interested in current events and philosophy Josh—who happened to be kind of a Baldwin.  After Cher’s doomed flirtation with Christian (not a Jew!), Josh was her perfect complement, a nice cute Jewish boy who appreciated her beauty, both outer and inner.

In Cher Horowitz, both Josh and I had found a new kind of shiksa goddess—one who happened to be Jewish.

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It was armaggedon. My older brothers had finally found my pink and purple diary, and almost immediately they had located the money shot page. In the midst of all my ramblings about how much I hated ballet class and how rad grilled cheese was, there lay words so filthy and disgusting that I shudder to this day just thinking about it. In my mind’s eye I still see that sentence. Written by six year-old hands that had just learned the correct way to hold the pen with the rubber Miss Piggy on top. "I want to fuck Eric Blankman."

Did I know what this verb meant, "to fuck"? Well, I’d seen Porkies and Fast Times at Ridgemont High-I was certainly more worldly than my classmates who didn’t have irresponsible babysitters. I knew "fucking" involved something very exciting between a girl and a boy, and I also knew there was a strong element of naughtiness about it. Naughty enough that when my meddling brothers presented my diary to my poor mother, I did the only logical thing I could do: I locked myself in the bathroom and sobbed shamefully for what seemed like hours. After much cajoling, my mom finally got me to open the door, and she came in and sat on the floor (I was on the toilet). She told me how sex was not necessarily meant for first-graders. It was for adults who wanted to express their love for each other. It involved sperms and tubes and eggs and sacs and all sorts of gross, complicated shit I was not even close to being able to comprehend.

My mom was progressive about the whole situation–she laid human sexuality out for me in an open and honest way, and tried to reinforce that sex is something wonderful and normal and nothing to be ashamed of. And you know what the result of that illuminating conversation was? I vowed to never talk about "fucking" in front of my parents ever, ever again. Somehow this sexual guilt in relation to my very liberal, loving parents has grown over the past 25 years to rival that of even my most repressed Catholic friends. Ever since that traumatic day, I have remained fastidious in the effort to virginize myself in their presence, going to great lengths to avoid any possible indication that I think about or talk about or actually have sex.

So, for instance, I’ve tried to steer my parents towards PG-rated fare for family movie night. Or, if I do happen to select an R rated film, the rule is that graphic violence is totally fine, but if someone so much as moans lustfully, the mission must be aborted. (Although there was that time in the mid-90s when my dad took me to a sneak preview of a new comedy by a local filmmaker who was getting lots of buzz-his name was Kevin Smith and the film was called Clerks and neither one of us was prepared to find out what "snowballing" was.) Or, when I was moving last year and my parents were coming to help, I wrapped my vibrator in various layers of clothing, put them in a plastic bag inside a tote bag and then guarded that tote with my life. The only rabbit my parents need to know I own is the one I use to open bottles of wine (which I always drink very responsibly, of course).

Things are still so bad, in fact, that I’m not going to tell them the topic of tonight’s story. They’ve asked. I think I’ll make something up. I might actually write a whole other piece to send to them just so we don’t have to relive any of this awkwardness ever again.

That said, I do want you all to know that my crazy sexual guilt does not extend beyond my immediate family. So, uh, Eric Blankman?  I hear you’re married now and that you have a baby and you live out in the Midwest. But if that doesn’t work out and you find yourself in New York at some point, maybe you’ll wanna gimme a call?

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