Goodbye Farrah

Farrah Fawsett died today. I didn't know her personally and I was never really a fan of Charlie's Angels, but she and that show added a strange color to my childhood. I was in elementary school when Farrah hair was as ubiquitous as "Rachel" hair was in the late 90's, and remember struggling to force my cowlicky hair into symmetrical sausages of feathered gorgeousness. I remember my mom calling her a "sexy woman". Actually, now that I think of it, she didn't actually say that about Farrah, but about a woman who looked exactly like Farrah that we saw at a casino in Reno. I wonder what the context was, because that was an unusual thing for my mother to say about any woman. But I remember it and I think that stuck in my head, that being a sexy woman would somehow entail large breasts and blond feathered hair and a smile that was perfect, confident and empty. I didn't look anything like her, nor did anyone I knew, nor could we ever, given our non-relation to her, feathered hair or no, but she was the standard for beauty for a good while in the 70's.

Like all beauties, though, she aged and we loved her less and scrutinized her artistic choices more, and blamed her for ruining everything by being weird on talk shows and getting cancer. I would imagine that her last few years in front of the camera were and exhausting and frustrating mix of trying to change an iconic image while maintaining an iconic dignity. I'd imagine that she wasn't very comfortable, nor very comforted, to be simultaneously pitied and called an exhibitionist. Yuck. If that's what being a sexy super-blond pinup-turned-odd aging "actress" is all about, I'll pass thanks. But it does feel like a piece of my childhood ideals died with her today.

She never married Ryan O'Neil. I'm fine with that, in fact, I like that. I imagine that she knew what marriage was all about and after her divorce from Lee Majors, probably knew the difference between love and paperwork. Goodbye Farrah. Goodbye childhood fantasies of bottle beauty and glossy hair. Goodbye illusions about marriage and life without pain and fame without destructive attention and privacy and dying with dignity. Goodbye. And for all of the things about you that I didn't really know about, but agreed about anyway, I'm sorry Farrah.