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picture of what she wanted to be when she grew up—a star. According to her, “I thought I was an angel from heaven sent to cure polio. When Dr. Salk did it, I was really pissed off. From the time I could talk, I began to sing. Singing just came from the inside—something I’d do without thinking whenever I felt good or was really blue” (17).
    “I always knew that I was going to be somebody,” she continues.
When I was little, my mom and I used to go to Hollywood Boulevard and buy a couple of hot dogs and sit in our car watching the interesting people go by, and I guess I thought about it even then. I grew up thinking I wanted to be a movie star, because they were happy; they wore diamonds. That life would take me away from all that was real and ugly. I always felt really embarrassed about being poor, because I thought it was punishment for something I had done wrong (18).
    She also recalls, “My mother once told me something that has stayed with me through thick and thin. ‘Honey, you’re not the prettiest or the most talented, so make the most of what you got.’ At the time, that hurt. I felt so ugly, while my sister was so beautiful, with this white-blond hair and green eyes, like my mom. Once we went to Mexico and they wouldn’t let me back over the border because they thought I was a Mexican and my mother was trying to sneak me in” (18).
    Still, Cher did not give up her dreams of becoming famous; in fact, she practiced her signature until it befit a movie star. “I got my autograph together when I was twelve. I worked out the way I’d write it when I was famous. My mother always told me, ‘You have something, trust me!’ I hadno reason to believe her, but somehow I always did. Somehow, I always thought I’d become something fantastic” (19).
    There were times when it didn’t look like her dreams were going to come true. “I was a mess,” proclaims Cher of her childhood self-image.
I knew I wanted to be famous, but I didn’t know what I could do. I would look in the mirror and see a not very distinguished-looking person. I wasn’t good looking. I wasn’t even cute. I wasn’t a Catholic, but I went to Catholic school and got A’s on all my catechism tests. I never could get behind the idea of penance, though. Once, when I was a kid, I said, ‘Mother so-and-so looks like Joe E. Brown.’ That nun beat the absolute shit out of me; beat me to a pulp and made me say the Rosary on my knees across the schoolyard. It was a killer, but I still believe in God and America, even if it’s bad for my image (20).
    Georgia fondly recalls, “The girls always made me pretty little gifts of drawings. On Mother’s Day, they’d steal a rose from a neighbor’s garden and bring it to me on a tray with burned toast and runny eggs so I could have breakfast in bed. To this day, neither of them can cook” (11).
    “I never expected Cher to do anything conventional,” she attests. “As a child, she was incredibly strong-willed and never wanted to fit in with the crowd. She didn’t kowtow to teachers or trends. Because she thought of herself as different she wanted to look different—she wore patent-leather shoes when teachers didn’t permit it or wild-colored glasses. But the outside is a mask. On the inside, she’s very conservative, straight, deeply emotional, and vulnerable,” says her mother (21).
    Cher has also always been very outspoken. Recalling one incident that took place when she was ten years old, she explains,
At the school I was going to then, you were supposed to share something in class, you know, your feelings, stuff like that. And I got up and said, “This is shit. I really don’t enjoy it here, I really don’t like any of you.” And I walked out. I was ten. My grandmother kind of laughed. Eventually my family got used to the fact that I was a little bit strange. My mother invited that, because she thought it was much more interesting to be different. But she was never really