Public Image

Physical Appearance

Cher has attracted media attention for her physical appearance—particularly her youthful looks and her tattoos. Journalists have often called her the "poster girl" of plastic surgery.[319] Author Grant McCracken, in his book Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture (2008), draws a parallel between Cher's plastic surgeries and the transformations in her career: "Her plastic surgery is not merely cosmetic. It is hyperbolic, extreme, over the top ... Cher has engaged in a transformational technology that is dramatic and irreversible."[319] Caroline Ramazanoglu, author of Up Against Foucault: Explorations of Some Tensions Between Foucault and Feminism (1993), wrote that "Cher's operations have gradually replaced a strong, decidedly 'ethnic' look with a more symmetrical, delicate, 'conventional' ... and ever-youthful version of female beauty ... Her normalised image ... now acts as a standard against which other women will measure, judge, discipline and 'correct' themselves."[320]

Cher has six tattoos. The Baltimore Sun called her the "Ms. Original Rose Tattoo".[321] She got her first tattoo in 1972.[321] According to Sonny Bono, "Calling her butterfly tattoos nothing was like ignoring a sandstorm in the Mojave. That was exactly the effect Cher wanted to create. She liked to do things for the shock they created. She still does. She'll create some controversy and then tell her critics to stick it."[322] In the late 1990s, she began having laser treatments to remove her tattoos.[323] The process was still underway in the 2000s. She commented, "When I got tattooed, only bad girls did it: me and Janis Joplin and biker chicks. Now it doesn't mean anything. No one's surprised."[324]

In 1992, Madame Tussauds wax museum honored Cher as one of the five "most beautiful women of history" by creating a life-size statue.[325] She was ranked 26th on VH1's list of the "100 Sexiest Artists" published in 2002.[326]

Cher was the inspiration for Mother Gothel, a fictional character who appears in Walt Disney Pictures' animated feature film Tangled (2010). Director Byron Howard explained that Gothel's exotic appearance, whose beauty, dark curly hair and voluptuous figure were deliberately designed to serve as a foil to Rapunzel's, was based on Cher's "exotic and Gothic looking" appearance, continuing that the singer "definitely was one of the people we looked at visually, as far as what gives you a striking character."[327]