Being a little blond girl in the late 70s was an interesting experience. Comparisons were made to the namesake First Daughter, but besides that, there were two other role models around. One was Blondie, aka Deborah Harry, which is honestly a tough act to live up to. The other was the lovely Farrah.

The kickass glamourous Charlie's Angel was inspiring, and we all rebelled in our own way when Jill was replaced by the lackluster Kris. At the tender age of whatever, people told me that I'd look like Farrah someday. Well, they were wrong, but that doesn't mean that we didn't all secretly want to be as strong and sassy as she was, even if we hated the hair. What we did do, some of us secretly, was follow Farrah throughout her life: her acting triumphs, her personal blahs. But she was always someone we respected, even if the only thing that the guys remembered was The Poster. Hey, it's a nice poster. I think one of my cousins had it up. One of the Roy boys. More likely the Biscoe.

A few years later, something happened that we could actually take part in without too much feathered hair. Egged on by radio and a new thing called MTV (which some of us had to watch at friends' houses), we discovered Michael Jackson. I remember Off the Wall, but Thriller was It. I stayed up half the night to tape Beat It off the radio, and by that I mean I had to hold the tape recorder, with its cheesy "microphone" square, up to the speaker of a radio, and inevitably the DJ or station call sign was mouthing over the intro. I listened to that song every night for months; it was my preteen lullaby. THAT, to my ten-year-old brain, was what I wanted life to feel like to me. That's what I thought life for a grownup felt like. That year, my younger sister and my friends and I choreographed dances to almost all the Thriller songs. I still know some of them. I remember heated debates between my older sister and my mother about whether Billie Jean was pro-life or not. Pissing contests in the schoolyard between Anjanette and Sherri about who was the biggest MJ fan.

Honestly, I stopped giving a fuck about Michael Jackson after Thriller, and Farrah, well, I guess I've only admired her from afar. So if I'm mourning, would it be selfish to say that I'm not mourning for them or their loved ones? Instead I'm mourning the world of 1978, the world of 1983, but mostly, I'm mourning the little girl who tried to make sense of it all, even though there probably wasn't any sense. Just some good marketing, a good beat, and a lyric or two.

RIP, Little Girl. And remember, no one wants to be defeated. Or have Farrah hair either.