#7 More Dead Icons--Farrah Fawcett

Though not close to the posthumous status of Michael Jackson, for whom the mourning around the world is approaching insanity, Farrah Fawcett, at the very least, had the most "iconic" HAIRDO of the late 70's and 80's. Almost every co-ed in my classes mimicked it for years, along with every other pre-teen on the planet.

Here is Botticelli's famed version of the "wind-blown" look in "Birth Of Venus," where the elaborate coiffure serves to cover at least one naughty bit. The right hand though, while coyly covering the right breast, deliberately directs the eye to the exposed left one. And notice that the west-wind Zephyrs are blowing the goddess and her elaborate "do" to the shore so that the goddess of Spring will cloak Venus more modestly ... too late. But that's the erotic point, isn't it? Not enough, not quite in time.

Farrah was a sex-goddess too, and her Botticellian poster of more than 30 years ago (you've seen it--it's all over the internet right now) surpassed even Betty Grable as the best-selling pin-up of all time. All the naughty bits are covered ... but not enough, not quite. The pubescent eye is deliberately directed to the very center of the poster where the skin-tight whatever-it-is reveals the right-nipple-outline underneath (Ahh ... the bra-less era.) Same erotic effect as the more demure but more naked Venus above. Accessible only maybe. But in contrast to the goddess's sidelong glance and subdued grin, Farrah looks at us directly with an unashamed toothy smile of unprecedented dimensions--still Ultrabrite wholesome but with the randy undercurrents.

In the very early 70's when I first noticed her in those toothpaste commercials, I remember pointing out to my sons that this "unknown" was destined to become a star. Later, sure enough, my sons would never miss an episode of her "Charlie's Angels" heyday. (Okay, me neither.) She had made it as a genuine "sex-symbol"--to use the term in the old-fashioned Marilyn Monroe sort of way. Unlike Marilyn though, she didn't progress much beyond that, and her later years were much of a muddle. But by all accounts she was a sweet and caring person, and remained lovable and semi-"famous" to the end. Her rare cancer was of continued media concern for the last two years. But still beautiful and slowly dead at a youthful 62? ... a cosmic injustice.

She lives up to the "icon" epithet in an ironic way ... literally. Her IMAGE has become more famous than she has. That pin-up poster IS somehow transcendent. Almost sacred, in an Eastern Orthodox kind of way. I don't think Ms. Fawcett would be ashamed to achieve that little bit of immortality.
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