The Canberra Times - Mark Juddery column

The Sandy Syndrome

April 16, 2007

Remember Charlotte Church? A few years ago, this Welsh songbird was known, fittingly, as the “Voice of an Angel”. As a pretty 15-year-old, her soprano voice had both a pristine sweetness and a power beyond her years.

At age 22, she is still a celebrity in Britain, but she’s reinvented her image far more than Madonna ever did. She can still sing in tune, but after a few years of partying, her voice is no longer so angelic. She now has a TV variety show, where she is a confident interviewer and a bold comedienne, disguising herself as various weirdos so she can go out annoying people. She is also one of Britain’s crudest, most controversial and potty-mouthed television hosts. Forget the voice of an angel; this is the voice of the juvenile delinquent who painted smutty drawings over the school wall.

It’s commonly known as the Sandy Syndrome – or at least, it has been since I made up the term a few minutes ago. This is named after the character in Grease who, despite being cute and wholesome, feels the need to turn into a slut with tight leather pants just so she can win a guy who is already madly in love with her. Church was very popular as a cute young girl, but rather than grow up to be a cute young woman, she’d rather be a laddette.

We’ve seen it before. For some reason, few celebrities enjoy staying cute. Three years after playing Sandy on film, Olivia Newton-John took a leaf from her character’s book, singing Physical with a famously saucy video clip, which got her banned in some southern states of the US. (Then again, everything gets banned in those states.) Then there was Kylie Minogue, who was not content to trade on her cute, Neighbours appeal. Her management said that she was aiming for a “sophisticated” image, which apparently meant she wanted to wiggle her bum a lot and appear on album covers with her tongue sticking out suggestively.

To be fair, her Sandy Moment was a little less creepy than Nikki Webster’s. A few years after becoming a star at the Olympics opening ceremony, Webster had several raunchy photos in a certain men’s magazine, which noted that she had reached the age of consent before they went to press. Fine, but just before they went to press. Nobody seemed to ask “How old was she when the photos were actually taken?” But however young she was, she was officially no longer cute.

“Cute” is one of those words (like “cool” or “kitsch”) which is easiest to define through examples. Renee Zellweger and Pia Miranda, for example, are cute; Russell Crowe definitely is not – and nor is Cate Blanchett, much as everyone likes her. Cute is not usually sexy, unless it’s the exotic “gamine” cuteness bestowed upon movie stars called Audrey, or perhaps the bubbly cuteness of Drew Barrymore and Meg Ryan. Even a few blokes are cute, I understand: Eric Bana, boy bands, the male cast of Friends…

Frankly, cuteness is underrated. The adage “Sex sells” might be true, but cute sells even better. This has been clear at the movies since the silent era, when the biggest box-office star was not a sex symbol like Valentino or Louise Brooks, but Mary Pickford, “the world’s sweetheart”, who specialised in playing young girls in pigtails. The biggest female star of the 1930s? Garbo? Lana Turner? No, it was Shirley Temple. The fifties? Marilyn Monroe, obviously! No, it was Doris Day. Get the picture?

There’s always a place for thrilling sex symbols – I needn’t tell you that – but we can also use a few people to be sweet and lovable, lighten the world, and make you think “Gosh, she’s cute.” Fortunately, Olivia still fits that description (Physical did fool anyone), but I still miss the Charlotte and Nikki of old, before they got Sandy Syndrome and said “Hey look, I’m a hottie!” Considering how popular they were in the old days, I won’t be alone. As Shirley Temple understood through her 25-year entertainment career, and Drew Barrymore also seems to have finally worked out, everyone loves a cutie.