Michael Jackson (1958-2009) and Farrah Fawcett (1947-2009)

As of Thursday at 7:30 pm, every post on my Facebook homepage has been either about Farrah Fawcett’s death or Michael Jackson’s.  And the updates keep on coming.  It’s interesting how celebrities have touched our lives.  I was only three or four when the Thriller video made its debut, but I know plenty of people my age who can tell me where they were when they first saw it on television (yes, even those who were three at the time).  His weirdness aside, Michael Jackson did touch more than a generation with his music.  While he had already made a name for himself as a child and a teenager, as an adult, he was definitely considered a pop culture icon of the 1980s.  His music, along with big hair and shoulder pads, will always be one of the first things people think of for the decade.

A few years before Michael Jackson became famous as a solo artist, there was a woman named Farrah.  As one of Charlie’s Angels, Farrah Fawcett gave women a new role on TV dramas.  Even though she was only on the show for one season and only one of the three angels, Farrah’s name has always been the first which comes to mind when one mentions the show.  In those days, while there were some TV roles which didn’t regulate a woman to the home as wife and mother, most tend to work in professions which were not male-dominated.  However, the women from Charlie’s Angels were different.  They weren’t just detectives like Nancy Drew, but detectives with police training.  And they were attractive (who on television ISN’T, unless they’re in comedy?), and probably caused a lot of girls to feel badly about their appearances (and a lot of men to purchase her poster, which sold millions. That poster even made an appearance in ANOTHER 1970s cultural icon, Saturday Night Fever). While cop dramas today all have women on the show, and sometimes even women in senior positions, they tend to work with the men.  One might say that the Angels report to Charlie, a man, but Charlie is also not seen, giving the women a more prominent and strong role. There really hasn’t been a show like Charlie’s Angels since it went off the air.

Both celebrities definitely made strong impacts in their respective decades. But to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure which one of these deaths impacts me more.  Michael Jackson was more of an icon from “my time,” as I was already in kindergarten when Thriller video came out.  Charlie’s Angels, on the other hand, was about to debut its fourth season when I was born.  That said, as a woman, I tend to lean more towards strong female icons, even if they aren’t from my time.