I played barbies until it was past time to stop. Not barbies necessarily, just... dolls. After that, I switched to virtual ones and 4 thousand hours of the sims 4 ensued. But that's beside the point.
Today, I was thinking about a particular fanfic that I read in 2019. It was shameless smut and, as the freshly-turned 13 year old I was at the time, I inhaled it all in one sitting. This one though, was something else. I don't know exactly what about it was so captivating to me. My brain works in such mysterious ways, I can never quite tell why something clicks and I'm forever changed as a result. It was Heathers, of course, Chansaw, naturally. I just remember reading about Heather, about her aura, her perfection, and just feeling mesmerized. And then the connection was made. I remember being struck by how similar Heather was to one of my dolls.
Here is how I played dolls (and wrote stories in general): there was a young girl (always) and she was tormented and tortured and hated and bullied. Her family despised her and treated her horrendously, her peers were disgusted by her and awful as a result. She was weird, but she didn't deserve it. How could one deserve such cruelty? This girl was played (or rather, I played as her) with a child doll that was appropriately sized to match with my other adult barbies. She was blonde and beautiful, but usually had some considerable flaws that explained a bit of, although not justified, the hate. The girl would run away and subsequently find a beautiful, magical world. It would be perfect and she would take everyone who deserved it with her there. The others could eat grass. In my biblical-barbie-esque storylines, she would end up happily ever after in the end. Either that or I would go for complete tragedy, but that was more my mother's taste. Anyways, when everything was settled and she was queen, she would transform into this princess. This perfect doll with the most beautiful clothes and hair and face. If she had any flaws, I pretended they weren't there. She was the same size as the original protagonist and was also blonde and light-eyed, making her the perfect replacement.
This is who Heather Chandler was to me. Majestical, otherworldly, flawless. And still, what interested me was that beneath the surface, she was anything but. Just like the doll, she might be beautiful, but she is from an ugly world. Heather and the doll are both separate from the rest in their own unique ways. The doll might have everyone's admiration now, but at what cost? What has she suffered and changed to make that happen? What has Heather?
Heather Chandler is a repressed 16 year old (she's just a junior) who views sexual assault as part of the cost of being admired. Everyone wants her as a friend or a fuck. Fine. But she's still spitting in her image when no one's looking. She's pretending not to be utterly in love with her best friend, maybe even to herself. Better yet, she's pretending not to care so well, that while a photo of Veronica and her lies tucked in her locker so she can see it every day, Veronica truly believes she is just a means to an end to Heather. Heather lives in the perfect world that she has found and carved for herself where she is queen and everyone loves her. But the ugly world hasn't ceased to exist. It lies under the surface. In the crudeness of her methods and in the expectations set upon her.
Another thing that reminds me of Heather is the song "Michelle" by Sir Chloe. In fact, the fanfic, Heather, and the song are all intrinsically linked in my mind. I cannot think of one and not the other.
"Walk in the room, watching you smoke
I'm such a fool, take off your coat
You know just how to be cruel
When you shake your hips that way
I don't care what you say
Michelle, Michelle
You are a monster from hell
Michelle, Michelle
You are a monster from"
That's Heather, isn't it? She's a monster. She's beautiful. She's sex. To take off her coat is cruel and so is to shake her hips, paint her lips. She's an object and therefore can be blamed for how people feel and don't feel in relation to her. After all, being desirable is her purpose. If that elicits a reaction or not, regardless of her wants and feelings, can be pinned on her. Heather is at once all-powerful and powerless. She acquired all possible control in her ugly ugly world, but it is not enough to allow for room to breathe. To be happy. And it never will.
No one will argue that Heather isn't mean. She is. Terribly so. She is at once victim and perpetrator. Maybe not even separately. It is a role after all. Her place in Westerburg High is utterly fucked to have. When she acquired it, she raised her status as a woman. But she didn't stop being one, just another type. The only one who could properly rule school, she took the role of the observed and scrutinized, but ruling also means order. Order means punishment. And she administered it freely and without pulling punches.
Heather never got to leave her world. She never got to grow old. She never got to find herself. To stop hiding pictures. In the end, people will remember Heather as the girl who was such a bitch she killed herself. Poor Heather suffered so. "In order to be happy, she had to give up her power. And the only way to do that was death". What a convenient narrative. Cheer for those we bury, for they are finally free. I can only remember how the priests cried as the witches screamed for help as their flesh burned. You see, they have to incinerate their mortal and sinful bodies into ash so their eternal soul is freed and can go to heaven. It is so sad a ritual, but necessary. Otherwise they would just rot in hell.
Veronica and JD murdered Heather in her pajamas. She felt her throat burning and closing up. Then oblivion. Later, the girl she loved and her newfound boyfriend would concoct a beautiful narrative regarding her death. Why she deserved to die. She was sweet, it turns out. Just misunderstood. Couldn't find a way out and just had to end it.
Perhaps she would be able to if she had just been allowed to turn seventeen.
