What Would Stephanie Zinoni Do?

When I was young, I watched a lot of shows about strong women, like Wonder Woman and Laverne and Shirley. For a while, my favorite show was Dallas. Victoria Ewing had some serious chops. But the person I most wanted to be like, far and away, without a doubt, bar none, above all else, was Michelle Pfeiffer. To be specific, I wanted to be Stephanie Zinone, the character Michelle played in the movie “Grease 2”. The movie came out when I was 10, and over two decades later Stephanie Zinoni is still one of my heroes.

Grease 2 was the (sub-par) spinoff of the original Grease, which starred Olivia Newton John and John Travolta. Instead of making a straight-up sequel that followed Sandy and Danny into college, Grease 2 was set at the same Rydell High School in 1961, supposedly three years after the first Grease movie set in 1958. In Grease 2, Stephanie Zinoni is now the leader of the all-girl gang the Pink Ladies, and sweet Sandra Dee’s poodle skirts have been replaced by fierce Michelle Pfeiffer’s black eyeliner.

There were lots of good movies made about high school in the 80’s…Jon Hughes must not have gotten a full nights sleep until about 1995 with the number of films he was associated with. Classics like The Breakfast Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Say Anything were movies that anchored my generation to our identity and place in time. Some Kind of Wonderful gets an honorary mention here as the movie that made me want to play drums something fierce. Fingerless gloves can still make me catch my breath. Some people like Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, but it bored me. Probably because there was no female character in it who could even hold a weak candle to the incomparable Stephanie Zinoni.

I’m convinced that if Michelle Pfeiffer had by some random chance been in the vicinity of a high school in America in 1982, pretending to be 17 and living in 1961, she could have undeniably pulled this off in real life. To me, she was perfection. Her hair, her stance, her mannerisms,– I strove to imitate each element flawlessly. Hours were devoted to learning how to smack my bubble gum the way she did. My entire high school career, anytime I couldn’t decide what to wear on a date (which let’s be honest wasn’t very often), I went with Stefanie’s uniform from Grease 2: hoop earrings, pendant, black cuff bracelets, black v-neck sweater with black pants and black short boots. Pure. Genius.

In parts of the movie, Johnny Nogerelli (played sexily by Adrian Zmed) tries to tell her she is his girl, and claims confusion at her blatant dissatisfaction with serving as his arm candy. As I said, Stephanie is the head of the Pink Ladies, the all girl gang who exclusively dates the T-Birds—and of course she’s beautiful, with long straight blonde hair, blue eyes, and perfectly Maybelline-glossed lips. She has cool friends, we never see her parents so we assume they are completely laid-back and awesome like we all wished our parents were—basically, her life seems perfect. And, as she told Johnny during an exasperating yet brilliantly metaphorical conversation at the bowling alley: “I ain’t no one’s trophy.”

As a thoroughly pre-teen girl on the verge of adolescence, I watched (over and over again) this strong, sassy character make up her own mind and not let boys tell her what to do. She was feisty and brazen and confident in a way I desperately aspired to be. When someone asked her if she was free the next day, she responded: “I’m free every day. It’s in the Constitution”, and I took note.

I worshipped her strong sense of self, her ambition to be more than what she was, her intelligence and savvy about people and social situations, and most of all her independence and self-reliance. From Stephanie Zinoni, I learned how to stick up for myself no matter what all my friends did or said or how uncomfortable it was to go against the flow of what the rest of the crowd was doing. I saw an example of someone who thought for herself and made decisions accordingly.

It took me a few more years to agree with her that “There is more to life than making out”, and I can’t say that I strictly adhered to all of Stephanie’s approach to life throughout my college years.  After all, Grease 2 ended at high school graduation, so we really have no way of knowing what Stephanie’s (fictional) future held. But I’m guessing she didn’t go to undergraduate school at a big UC, get married, have kids, get an M.A. and a career, and proceed to shop at Target on a regular basis. I wonder sometimes how she would have signed her e-mails, if she would have an iPhone, would she listen to the Foo Fighters or Deathcab for Cutie. I’ve actually spent time wondering if she would drink Starbucks or if her radical streak would fight for the independent coffee shops. I’m convinced she’d use a Mac.

Idiosyncrasies aside, the conviction that women can be more than merely props for men has never left me. The idea that it’s okay to be strong and sassy and impatient with one’s lot in life has given me hope. The radical notion that we don’t always have to have it all together and (act as if we) love everything about our life has liberated me. Stephanie Zinoni taught me that being the best version of myself is more than a worthy goal; it is the foundation of all other goals.

I’m a big proponent of having models and mentors or “inspirers” in one’s life. I think they help us put a picture to what would otherwise be a vague concept or indistinguishable ideal. And I’d be lying if I said I still don’t think back regularly to what Stephanie modeled for me about true integrity, true womanhood, and true power. If not for her, I’d have had way less confidence than I did for many years, and made even more stupid decisions than I did. I also would have looked much less cool doing it. So in the name of heroines everywhere, today I recite the Pink Ladies Pledge:  “To act cool, to look cool and to be cool, till death do us part.” Think Pink!