Today’s prompt for Blogtober was Unusual Crushes and after wracking my brains to come up with something I was at a loss, because I don’t know about you but I don’t think there’s anything unusual about fancying the entire Fellowship of the Ring (except the dwarf – I’m not that weird).

Anyway, in the absence of any unusual crushes of my own my lovely husband offered to write a post for me instead.  And so I give you…. 500 words on Winona Ryder.

Couples sometimes do that thing where each partner gets to choose one celebrity and if the opportunity ever arose then they would be allowed to sleep with them once and it would be fine and wouldn’t affect the relationship at all. It’s all a fun fantasy, obviously. I don’t have precise figures on the number of marriages that have ended because of an uncomfortable reaction to one partner engaging in pre-agreed carnal congress with their celebrity crush, but I would imagine it’s low. Maybe Johnny Depp would have a better estimate.

However, when I was asked to decide on a prearranged celebrity partner, I played a very dangerous game. I didn’t go for a hyper-A-list glitterati bombshell like Nicole Shirtsinger or one of the Cardassians. I instead chose tactically. I chose someone who is likely to be attracted to me; someone with whom I am clearly compatible, physically and emotionally; someone with whom I have a great deal in common. Someone, furthermore, that I am positively likely to meet some time in the next six months to a year: the Academy Award nominated actress Winona Ryder.

I first fell for Winona (I imagine we’ll be on first name terms) when I saw the film Heathers as an impressionable teenager. Heathers is a cult teen movie from 1988 in which Winona plays Veronica Sawyer, a socialite teenager attending an Ohio school. She’s popular, successful, attractive. And, like her clique friends Heather, Heather and Heather, she’s pretty awful. However, Winona, I mean Veronica, doesn’t really agree with the behaviour of the Heathers. Winona kinda likes the geeks of her school, the kids who probably play videogames too much, don’t care so much about how they dress, and just don’t fit in. The kids, in short, who the Heathers like nothing more than to bully.

When Christian Slater arrives in town as Jason Dean, a motorcycling neerdowell outsider, Winona’s rebellious side kicks in. No, she doesn’t go on a shoplifting spree. No, look, that was just an error of judgement, Winona would never… well I know she did but… Right, she doesn’t go on a shoplifting spree this time, OK? No, she teams up with J.D. and kills a whole bunch of people and makes them look like suicides.

The teenage me thought Veronica, I mean Winona, was gorgeous in Heathers. She was sexy, sassy, funny, dangerous, but kind too. Winona went on to play many other roles that I found equally alluring: a cropped-haired elfin-featured android in Alien: Resurrection; a manipulative drug-addled undercover narcotics officer in A Scanner Darkly; and a chain-smoking paranoiac single mother in Stranger Things.

But when I think of Winona – which I don’t do often I assure you – but when I do think of Winona it’s the Heathers Winona that comes to mind. It’s with that Winona that I feel such chemistry, such a connection, and I think that’s probably because of my own obvious similarities to the motorcycling teenage rebel Christian Slater.

 

So there you have it. Thank you husband! For the record my favourite Winona is the one in Reality Bites. And I’ve never seen Heathers.

Do you have any unusual crushes you’d like to share?

This is the twenty-first post in my #Blogtober series – you can read the rest of the posts here.