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Saturday, May 16 Farrah's Song
Like so many dreams, of mine, I fantasize about saving people. Certainly in Rumson Fair Haven High School in the late 70’s and early 80’s, I could never have predicted that I would care enough about Farrah Fawcett to fantasize about healing her. She was the anti-thesis to everything I stood for. When the preppy, stuck up popular girls of Rumson and Fairhaven, trying to emulate Farrrah, parted their hair in the middle and feathered it back, I looked at my own beach fried, frizzy, curly mop and shrugged. I tried blow-drying my hair into feathers once. My head looked like a mound of frizz in the shape of a Christmas tree. I saw her famous poster everywhere; her perfect white teeth, her flawless body, her all American gal style. There I was, black BLONDIE rock and roll t-shirt cut off at the sleeves, beat up Frye boots, ripped faded Levis, a strand of leather around my neck on which hung a coke spoon. My pals used to chat about who was their favorite of Charlie’s Angels. Mine was Jaclyn Smith. Second fave was Cheryl Ladd, third was Kate Jackson. Farrah was always last. I guess, to the teen-age me, Farrah stood for everything I rebelled against. I’d take one look at her perfect pearly whites and think of all those preppy Rumson snobs I’d gone to school with who’s parents spent more money on their kid’s orthodontist’s bills then most parents spend on the entire family’s living expenses. It wasn’t Farrah’s fault that I’d come to associate her with everything I rebelled against, but it happened all the same. Much the same way I hated Bruce Springsteen when I lived on the Jersey shore, his hometown stomping ground, because the same redneck pricks who beat up gays and punk rockers were Springsteen fans. For the record I like Bruce now, but it took awhile. Somewhere along the line Farrah got older and I grew up. I watched her in “Extremities” and “The Burning Bed” and was amazed to find out she could really act. But it wasn’t until she posed nude for Playboy to show that 50 could still be hot, that I started to feel, well something like proud of her. Okay, yes, I know all feminists are now horrified, but for Farrah who’s life was so much about her looks, showing her fifty-year-old nude body was a huge and brave thing. Something like Demi Moore posing nude when she was major league pregnant. I like some of you had begun to hear the rumors of Farrah suffering from anal cancer. The first thing that crossed my mind was, what the hell is anal cancer, besides of course, the obvious. I’d never heard of it before. My second thought was, how humiliating this must be for Farrah. And then last night Farrah Fawcett did the unthink-able. For two hours on prime time TV, she let the world see a documentary of her battle with anal cancer. She let us see her crying, throwing up, losing her famous locks, falling into despair, fighting, fighting, fighting for her life. She let us see a side of her that few of us could ever let the public see. I could never do what Farrah Fawcett did last night.
Now she’s a different kind of icon; a vulnerable, sometimes adorable, honest woman who is not going quietly into the night. Today, for the first time, she is my favorite angel.
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