If you were a girl child in the 70s, Charlie's Angels probably figured largely in your life. This amuses me - who among us would even LET our young children watch a sleazy show like that now? Ah, the 70s, that era of just TERRIBLE parental judgement.
Anyhow.
I remember playing Charlie's Angels ALL the time on the schoolyard and with friends and I was always stuck being the turtleneck-wearing nerd Angel, Sabrina Garrett. I'm reading a lot of Charlie's Angels reminisces these days and the authors always claim that they voluntarily chose to be Sabrina, which causes me to make my skeptical face, since all of the little girls I knew fought viciously to be the sexy Angels - Jill Munroe, played by the ethereally gorgeous Farrah Fawcett, and to a much lesser extent, the brunette Kelly Garrett. NO ONE wanted to be Sabrina. EVERYONE wanted to be racecar-driving Jill Munroe with her perfect hair and her short shorts and her rollerskates, and that role was always reserved for the prettiest girl on the playground, her long straight blond hair waving behind her.
We learn to value other things as we get older, if we are lucky. If we were playing Charlie's Angels now, you and me, we probably would fight over who would get to be Sabrina, with her turtlenecks and her smarts, because adulthood - if we are lucky - brings with it the knowledge that some traits age better than others, that luminous golden beauty does not trail happiness in its wake. And Farrah Fawcett's life seems to be a prime example of this, a life that added up to... what, exactly? A hair-do, a few made-for-tv movies, a screw up for a kid, a final brave fight against cancer, and even her death was overwhelmed, in the end, by the death of a more famous weirdo.
Even so. I was sorry to hear of her death, sorry and sad to an extent that surprised me. Of course, her death was sad and hard and unearned - but death is often like that. What was I so sad about, I wondered, half-bemused? Was I sad for the flaky* b-list celebrity, sad for her final bit of heroism? Or was I sad for my own self, for being trapped in my own smart skin and watching a pretty blond girl run across the school yard being the prettiest girl in the world, sad for the flimsy fairy's gold of beauty, sad for childhood's end?
(*the "flaky" bit wasn't meant to be dismissive - it was based on an interview with Farrah where she'd dismissed herself rather heart-breakingly as a "blonde nothingness.")
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34 comments:
So true! And so funny--I had very similar thoughts last week.
http://bit.ly/15CzNy.
We would have been great playground friends! I'm with you on the Sabrina sentiments...I was Kelly all the way.
I think my sadness about Farrah's death stems in part from all the documentary about her that was shown a few weeks ago. It was just heartbreaking on so many levels although I couldn't help but feel like I was intruding as I watched it. I think seeing the people around her who loved her (her father especially) is staying with me right now.
I, too, was a child of the 70s... a few years older than you. I was the Sabrina, too--not because I wanted to be but not because I had to be either. Somehow, I just knew of those three women, Sabrina was the only one I might possibly be. It was just the best fit.
Yes! I also always had to be Jan Brady.
Nope, not me. I really DID always want to be Sabrina. She had a really sexy voice, among other great attributes. I thought Farrah's hair at the time was ridiculous. :)
How do you make me cover my mouth with mirth and then in the next split second feel my heart drop?
But hey, there was always Jill's little sister what was her name? We always added her to the "who do you want to be?" mix.
And you know what else my mom let us watch all summer long? LOVE BOAT. Go figure.
I'm like Megan... I really always wanted to be Sabrina. She was so classy, in my opinion. Regardless, though, Farrah will be missed.
I guess I was deprived....I was a child of the 70s, but I was never allowed to watch Charlie's Angels. Guess I didn't miss much! ;)
I was always stuck being Sabrina too, because I played with my older sister and her friends. Sometimes I even had to be BOSLEY. Now that's insulting!
I laugh about that too, the stuff that I got to watch when I was little (the 80's were much the same, apparently). I saw my first bare chest on Sixteen Candles when I was in kindergarten. I get bothered now if my B sees a movie with a kissing scene (she does too, and shouts "Ewww!"). I still know a handful of families who don't get too concerned over what their kids watch. Their kids aren't much more foul-mouthed or misbehaved than mine, time will tell if it matters much at all.
I got sad about Farrah too, the way you get about anyone who didn't get the miracle they were hoping for.
I was always Sabrina, too. I just didn't have that luxurious hair required for the other roles.
Whenever I see high school girls in "TMI outfits" I am reminded of this weird dichotomy: when we're young we want to be that sexy, perennially desired flirt with amazing hair but when we're older we recognize her as the impossibly sexist fantasy she is.
Of course, I'm still hung up on not having been born as Harriet of Harriet the Spy fame. Changed my name for 6 months AND ate tomato sandwiches for a whole year. But like the Prospector in Rudolph (the RNR) said: "Nuthin." I'm still me.
diaryofaturtlehead -- BOSLEY! Thank you for that laugh. I needed it.
When we would play Charlie's Angels at school I was always Sabrina. Which wasn't too bad, since when we played Little House on the Prairie, I was NELLY! ARGH!
I wasn't allowed to watch Charlie's Angels, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, any of that. It did make me pretty out of the loop in grade school. (I did still know how to strike an Angels' pose, more or less.) My younger siblings were allowed to watch anything and everything. I'm not sure who's better off.
I always liked Chris Monroe, actually. :)
I was too late for CA, just saw it in re-runs, but I liked it just the same.
I am (ahem) slightly too young to have watched Charlie's Angels as a kid. In fact, my first time watching anything Angel-related was the so-lame-it-was-howlingly-funny movie with Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, and Drew Barrymore. My husband had never even heard of Farrah Fawcett before last week.
(I know, we're such INFANTS!)
However. I too felt such sadness at her passing, and I think it was that "flimsy fairy's gold" you mentioned. So many people look up to these Hollywood stars as living the ultimate glamorous lifestyle, of portraying everything the ordinary, drab person wants to be, and in the end ...
It's just dust. None of it matters, when it's all been said and done. Life is so much more than good looks and lots of money.
Although those are nice, too.
I remember always having to be Tinkerbell, never Wendy, although I wanted desperately to be Wendy. Short curly hair for me, never that gorgeous stickstraight long hair, and long limbs to go with it. I don't remember ever playing Charlie's Angels, but I had me some super-strict parents. I was the only child in my whole entire school who wasn't allowed to watch 3's Company and Mork and Mindy, and it was painful!
And you don't need to be skeptical. The sort of women who grow up to write the sort of blogs you want to read are the sort that had to play Sabrina too. Finally, in adulthood, we've found each other. There are others out there like us. It's what I love about the net...I honestly thought I was a freakish mix even as a adult, but turns out I'm not so much.
I feel the same way about the Solid Gold Dancers. What were my parents thinking?!
I was incredibly saddened by her death, probably because it's the same kind of cancer that got my Dad. I wouldn't be able to watch the documentary...too close to home.
Ok, I for one LOVED being Sabrina Duncan. A) She had a brain. B) She was gorgeous without being slutty. C) I had the same haircut and convinced myself she was my birth-mom. My other girlfriends were always Jill/Kris Monroe or Kelly Garret.
Sabrina rocked. She was the bomb. Kate Jackson was the reason Spelling created the Angels. But Farrah was a phenomena no one expected. She was pretty incredible.
Too, too harsh on Farrah, Beck! She didn't seem like a bad person to me. And just because she didn't become mega-famous, that doesn't mean she was a washout. Apparently, she had any number of lifelong friends - a rarity in Hollywood and a testament to the type of person she must have been. You definitely can't judge her on what her son turned out to be. What about Mary Tyler Moore? A good actress, a good person, whose son committed suicide, I believe...
I always identified with Kate Jackson, myself...
What? I wasn't being harsh about her - she HERSELF dismissed her own image as a "blonde nothingness", which I think was horribly harsh. I was trying to write about the perception of what her life had added up to and not what it had actually added up to - and I never have said (or thought) that she was a bad person. I thought she seemed like a very nice person, and I'm sorry that this didn't come through.
I was always pretending to bep Kelly. I was blonde and a book nerd but wanted to be Kelly. She looked like my mom must have before she had kids and my mom idolized the actress herself and I idolized my mom and so in some weird way I guess I wanted to be my mom?
I never watched Charlie's Angels as a kid-- I don't remember not being allowed to, I think it was just not something anybody in our house was interested in watching (The Dukes of Hazzard, on the other hand...).
At any rate, since I never watched CA, Farrah's iconic character for me was Jessie Dewey, the conflicted ex-wife of the preacher in Robert Duvall's "The Apostle." (GREAT movie, by the way.) That was the image I carried around in my head for Farrah-- troubled and flawed and wounded and dignified.
Beck --
BACK AGAIN!
I don't think your post was harsh. Not at all. You were respectful to Fawcett, while judging society's perception and valuation of her outward appearance.
Also according to wikipedia, Sabrina Duncan was probably a functional alcoholic. Thanks, wikipedia contributors, for further ruining my childhood!
I was stuck playing Sabrina a lot too. But I ALWAYS wanted to be Kelly. Strangely, I never wanted to be Jill. Even back then, I never thought I would be cast as a sexy blonde.
My parents thought the show was too violent, but my babysitter (who is coincidentally quite a famous theatre actor now) always let me stay up to see it.
Funny but I remember not liking Farrah's character on the show. I used to really like Sabrina and Kelli. The way I remember Farrah most was not the sexy Jill but the abused wife she played in "The Burning Bed". She was amazing in that role and won some kind of award for it.
Kelly. My sister and I would fight over who could be Kelly. I don't remember liking Farrah's character that much.
I thought of the Angels as being just one generation ahead of me -- younger than my parents, older than me -- and her death is a shocker in that regard. Like, I must be pretty dang close to death myself. Michael Jackson's death didn't come with that same clang of mortality because he manipulated his body so much, he was practically made of plastic.
I'm Kelly, reporting for duty. I have the same memory: Nobody wanted to be Sabrina.
Some channel on cable ran a Charlie's Angels marathon a few nights ago. I watched one episode. So bad, but so good.
The ULTIMATE playground role assignment was being chosen to be Princess Leia when the boys played Star Wars. That is a post in itself...
I never forgot her poster pin-up phase and Charlie's Angels, but seeing her in The Burning Bed made me see those as her childish endeavors. She later portrayed a woman who tried to kill her three kids because the man she loved didn't want kids. I know it was only TV movies, but I always thought as her as talented in that TV-movie-woman-in-peril kind of way.
Oh the stuff we were permitted to watch as children of the 70's and 80's. One of my earliest memories is being 3 and screaming with fear while seeing the Incredible Hulk...yet later I loved it. I even remember watching Soap Operas with my mom when I was a preschooler. And I'll confess...I got to be Jill. I'm no raving beauty today and gawkiness set in when I was 10...but as an 8 yr old, I had long blond hair...that one me the part.
As for sadness over Farrah's death I feel similar as you do and I feel the same way about Michael Jackson...sad for how they lived...sad for their feelings of worthlessness...and sad that icons from my childhood are gone...
Did I really write one me the part? Perhaps there was another reason I was never cast as Sabrina. Yikes and humble I exit...
You are such a great writer.
Weird. I was thinking this recently, too, about how as an adult I'm so glad never to have followed up on my plan to become a famous blonde actress. It would have robbed me of my soul, because deep down inside I'm an insecure selfish jerk.
Yeah. Our inner Sabrinas are now our outer Sabrinas, 30 years later. 30 years!
True story: this year I was exemplifying a concept in media theory by using the promo clip for the CA movie, and one of my students put up his hand and asked: "Did Charlie's Angels use to be a TV show?"
??? !!!
Because, you know, it was CANCELLED before any of them were even born.
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