farrah

Farrah, i never had a chance.
I was too open and innocent to not be swept away by the tidal wave of your assault on pop culture in 1976. My poor little eyes had never beheld your like. Far too young to even know what "sexy" was, i was forever ensnared. I couldn't have told you why, but you touched something in me that could never again be touched in quite the same way.
First love is like that.
Oh, i'd had a hazy, half-formed response to Daphne on SCOOBY DOO that presaged my reaction to you. What aspect of my primal brain, or macho socialization, made me choose her over the brainier Velma? It makes no sense, Velma even wore glasses, like me.
But if Daphne was a faint breeze, you were a monsoon, indelibly marking your path.
Was it the nipple?
Yes.
And mind you, i didn't have the poster myself. I was too young to even consider that an option. The first (and come to think of it, only) girlie poster i ever had was Christie Brinkley, wearing a one-piece bathing suit with a section cut out.
But i didn't have to have your poster, for it was everywhere.
Of course, it wasn't the nipple alone. Your beauty radiated from every pore. But without the nipple...
It was like some unseen lightning bolt to my brain. I wasn't even consciously looking at it. But in school a few years later, while looking through a paperback biography of you...there they were again! Both of them!! You were playing tennis in a white outfit, your nipples almost pushing through the fabric. At that age i understood what i was looking at. Wide-eyed, i tore out that photo and kept it, sacred.
Decades later, i discovered that you did CHARLIE'S ANGELS for only one season. That seemed just inconceivable. Your impact was so huge, and i was so young, that time somehow accordioned, so that it seemed almost like you had always been in my life (of course, i may have also been subconsciously remembering that you came back to do guest episodes for two seasons).
And why did i never object to your marriage to Lee? Because i wasn't old enough to manifest our culture's poison of possessiveness? Because i wasn't old enough to "be your man"? Because i cherished you so greatly, that i would defer to whatever happiness you might want? Because i already had a relationship with Lee, our Six Million Dollar Man, and had deemed him trustworthy? Because i perceived that women were sexually and spiritually superior to men, and as such ought have any man or men at any time they wished? Okay, it probably wasn't that last one, i was only eight.
And why, years later, did i never fully trust Ryan O'Neal? Did i sense his instability?
It's funny...we grow up, our perceptions constantly, subtly realigning. Why did i never follow your career more closely as i grew? Looking at your acting credits, i realize i've only seen a handful. Perhaps by the time i was a teen, i was all too aware of the human tendency to idolatry, and had vowed to never succumb to it. Perhaps my adoration of you had been so great, that i subconsciously had no choice but to pull back.
I was quietly proud though, when you won over the critics in the 80s.
There were, of course, a tiny handful of projects you did which i could not resist. And by "tiny handful", i guess i mean the Playboys you did in the nineties (and the accompanying dvd). Holy heartstops...it almost never happens that an event lives up to hype, but great googily you did it. Instantly your chickenshit Playboy appearance in the 70s was forgiven.
Because i never followed you closely, i sadly cannot offer a burn-the-bridges farrahthon, only this one that will be realized by me nibble by nibble in decades to come.
-MYRA BRECKINRIDGE
-your S.W.A.T. episode
-HARRY O, your short-lived first series
-your four episodes of THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN
-all your CHARLIE'S ANGELS episodes
-SATURN 3
-THE BURNING BED
-EXTREMITIES
-your THE FALL GUY episode
-DR T AND THE WOMEN
-your THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW episode
Thank you for all you gave, Farrah. Perhaps even surprising to me just the tiniest bit, it seems that there really was genuine human substance behind the poster and angelic beauty that sent the libido of a culture into overdrive. Fame comes with a high price tag...but i hope that your joys outweighed your scars.
Now and always, from that little eight year-old...thank you.