Female film heroes: Betty Rizzo from Grease
Katie Button's search for female film heroes continues with Rizzo, the coolest of all the Pink Ladies.
I don’t know how many times I’ve watched Grease, and I wouldn’t tell you even if I did. It would be a pretty big number and I would feel ashamed, as though I had wasted my life watching John Travolta shake his hips when I could have been feeding the homeless or finding a cure for cancer. So what brings me back to Grease time and again? I’ve long grown out of my crush on Danny Zucko, know the moves to Hand Jive inside out and can sing-a-long with every tune. It’s Betty Rizzo.
The film might present preppy Sandra Dee as our heroine, but we ladies know better. Root for a girl who sacrifices everything about herself for a man? No thank you. Stockard Channing as Rizzo is the real star. The actress might not have been the first choice for the part (Lucille Ball’s daughter Lucie Arnaz enjoying that honour), might have been a 34-year-old acting the part of a teenager and been less obviously sexy than Sandy – but she’s the real deal.
Rizzo is a woman trapped in a conservative 50’s suburban America but steadfastly refuses to be a delicate wallflower. She climbs down the drainpipe at Frenchie’s sleepover to go meet up with the boys, doesn’t feel embarassed by her backseat-of-the-car sexploits with boyfriend Kenickie and holds her own in the aggressive banter.
She is very much at odds with her era. While Sandy chastises Danny for sneaking a slight boob grab, Rizzo is not only up for sex before marriage but doesn’t care who knows it. She is understandably freaked out by her pregnancy scare and is upset with Marti for making it public news, but again rises above the petty gossip. She knows her boundaries, her standards and her expectations.
For many Rizzo might be interpreted as a shameless slut – the oppostite to virginal Sandy in all the wrong ways. But she’s not that easy to pigeon-hole. If she were to bed-hop constantly we might tire of her antics, but Rizzo isn’t looking for sex, she’s looking for the one.
During her pregnancy scare Kenickie asks whether the child is his. She claims that it isn’t to save him grief, yet we know otherwise. Rizzo might not be whiter than white, but she was loyal to Kenickie and when apart from him desperately misses their connection. Their reunion at the end of the film is more touching than that of Danny and Sandy’s, though having thought the worst of her, I wonder that Kenickie deserves her.
It is this vulnerable side to her that Rizzo keeps well concealed. People know her as brash, opinionated and independent but fail to realise the sensitive nature she carefully sheids from a judgemental world. It is during the excellent song There Are Worse Things I Could Do (see video below) that we get to appreciate the real Rizzo.
As the confident leader of the Pink Ladies, she is comfortable knowing that she might not be perfect, but is true to herself. When Principal McGee wishes the students well at the end of their school career she cites prominent figures whose success her pupils might look to replicate. When she suggests beloved First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the camera reveals a wistful and inspired looking Rizzo. She’s not looking to be some simpering male accessory or vacuous beauty, but to be a woman respected by many. And when the alternative females are the likes of Sandy, she certainly gets my vote.
Katie Button writes for TV Scoop, Liverpool Pies and Star Trip. She once wrote Pink Ladies on a the back of an old t-shirt with a fabric pen, but suspects that it might not rank as official inclusion in the gang.
