Pictures of Farrah

This is, by news-cycle standards, ancient. But the death of Farrah Fawcett was overwhelmed, coverage-wise, by the death of Michael Jackson, and I lost track of this thread before I ever finished it. So I’m posting it now. For a lot of American males passing through adolesence in the ’70s, Farrah Fawcett was a moment of recognition. You didn’t have to acquire the telltale Farrah poster or be a fan of Charlie’s Angels — which she quit after one season, anyways. But you were bound to form an opinion about her. The thing to remember is that no woman in show business had ever quite looked like Fawcett before. She was a new definition of “all-American,” this Breckian blonde. And Charlie’s Angels was nothing if not a license to gaze. It may have been the first U.S. network show of its kind: a straight-up ogle. (The genre would grow to include Baywatch , Melrose Place and the Hooters restaurant chain.) So the discussion of Farrah’s hotness was conducted on its own terms and as a way to evaluate the female student population, whose presence had become Very Important To Us Young Males. How did she compare to the other Angels? (I was partial to Kate Jackson, the aloof, dark-haired one.) Which girls at school kind of looked like her? (I remember an article in People in which a Detroit postal worker won renown as a Farrah lookalike.) This was not enlightened consideration of male-female relations. In my defense, I was 13. Arguments concerning feminism and backlash were happening over my head. Looking back, however, I could see Fawcett being a challenge to movement feminism —

not a repudation, necessarily, but a competing and potentially subversive idea. The “Angels” were an empowered, butt-kicking, high-achieving force for good. Being attractive was just another tool for disarming evildoers, right up there with karate and quick thinking. On the other hand, they were preposterous. This was cartoon girl power; almost nothing about it challenged men to think of women as anything except bikini models. If you liked Angie Dickinson for portraying Police Woman as an actual person, and considered that show a leap forward for TV drama, Charlie’s Angels might have felt like a slap. To some extent it’s the ’70s Age of Jiggle TV all over again, only more so: Pole dancing is on exercise DVDs. “Laddie mags” like Maxim and FHM take leering as far they can without having their titles wrapped in mylar or placed at the back of the store. The 2003 Angels movie sequel was ideal for Maxim , which celebrated with a cover shoot of the three new stars and a headline proclaiming, “A triple order of hot wings!” Seeing that was like being 13 again. Fawcett’s quick exit, after one season of Charlie’s Angels , is, in hindsight, more interesting than her decision to star in the show in the first place. Leaving put her on a path to work for which she’d be credited as a serious actor. And while being photogenic didn’t hurt her chances for other roles, it didn’t guarantee other roles, either. Most actresses don’t ever escape their initial typecasting. Here’s one who did, and had the before-and-after pictures to prove it.

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Pictures of Farrah

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