I used to watch this show while I was getting ready for school. It was like a
soap opera for
little girls. It was very silly but almost liberating to see this cartoon chickie looking all
office girl in the daytime, then pop onto the stage with all her
outrageous friends in a music video inspired kaleidoscope of colors and star shapes, close-ups of her singing with her head thrown back, wearing sparkly tight pants and gigantic earrings.
And when she kissed her boyfriend I SWEAR TO GOD I saw their cartoon tongues mingling before the scene cut out and soon it was all the girls in my fifth grade class could talk about. We were titillated by the powers that Jem promised. If Jem had a tongue then maybe she was real! And maybe it was possible that a woman could work in an office and wear smart business suits and help orphans during the day and then shimmy into some hot pants and shape her hair into a pineapple and paint on some geometric eyeshadow and slip her tongue into some hot guy's mouth.
The show would end just as I was leaving for school. I would be wearing my anti-Jem dork suit, white turtle neck shirt with a pattern of spouting whales all over it, also Wrangler jeans that were deepest dark blue with yellow stitching, so stiff they almost creaked when I walked. But every time I looked down at my pink jelly bracelets with embedded sparkles I would sing a small piece of the theme song:
“Jem is truly outrageous.
Truly truly truly outrageous….”