Living with Luann

As Luann grew up, so did I. Her unrequited crush on Aaron mirrored my own unrequited crushes, her journal confessions narrated on a mic eerily similar to what I’d set down on paper. Naturally, I was one of those readers who personally felt betrayed by her makeover – inevitable, in hindsight, but a severe blow to my unpopular, plain teenage self when it happened. That was the beginning of the end for me. Luann was the underdog, and I wanted her to shine as the underdog – not with new hair and contacts, but as she always had been. The strip lost its charm for me after that: it became less relatable till I got to a point where I’d no longer bother to keep myself updated with the story. Makeover stories are an integral part of popular female culture – hell knows, I desperately longed for one myself – but what was radical about Luann was that she wasn’t conventionally pretty, yet she was the protagonist of her own strip. That was empowering to my incipient feminist self, the notion that beauty and popularity weren’t the only markers of worth in women. We could be weird and dorky and still be pretty damn awesome.

Obviously, Luann was no feminist utopia. I recall rampant slut shaming in it, for one, and the idea that beauty and brains cannot coexist. It was appallingly second wave at times and woefully conventional in its pandering to popular ideas about teenage girls otherwise. But in a world where comics are seen as a singularly male domain, it was refreshing. I’m certain that wasn’t the only femme identified girl back then who felt a little less excluded by its very presence. Despite the flaws that glaringly stand out in retrospect, Luann provided a sympathetic space for me back then, and my memories of the strip remain rather fond. It made rushed mornings before school a bit brighter, and coping with teenage misery a little easier. And if nothing else, that cassette recorder journal of hers was something to aspire to. It was the 90s, after all.