Our Readers' Best Farrah Fawcett 'Dos
A memorial to the '70s sex symbol.
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1 of 7
Dana Stevens
I was 10 when Charlie’s Angels debuted. This is my school picture from that year, my aggravatingly straight and unstyleable hair plastered into the style that was referred to, at least in Texas, as “wings.” Wearing your hair in wings, with a middle part and plenty of hairspray, was near-obligatory in 5th grade at Helotes Elementary. When the girls played “Angels” (tossing our wings, pointing imaginary guns, and shouting “Freeze!”), I usually took the part of Kate Jackson’s Bree. (She was the "brainy one.” Now there’s a low bar: The brainy Charlie’s Angel.)
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2 of 7
Penelope Anderson
This turned up recently in a box, and now lives in my wallet. I used to collect the Charlie's Angels cards—they had a picture of the girls on one side, with a caption ("Nice work, Angels!" "Kelly in Trouble" etc.). The back made up part of a larger picture—I think it took 9 cards to make one picture. I traded with my friends and once got 6/9th of Kate Jackson—a disappointment, though, as she was my least favorite angel when I was 10. Later I appreciated that her character was the smart one. But at 10, I was all about the hair. (I believe the outfit came from Sears.)
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3 of 7
Caitlin
This photo was snapped in 1982, and I had been sporting "wings" for a few years by then. I had very straight hair, so it took quite a bit of work with the curling iron and the can of Aquanet to get the look. The photo was taken in front of my family home, and I'm reclining on the hood of a 1959 Jaguar sedan.
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4 of 7
Stacey Donohue
This photo is of me dressed up for the "faux" prom: Basically, my friends and I went to Atlantic City to dance, skipping my friends' "real" prom (I was still a junior—16 for sure). My date was Dana—a wonderful, but closeted at the time, gay man, who simply adored my Farrah wings.
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5 of 7
Anneliese Glaesman
Here I am in 1976 at the age of 12, 7th grade. I used a curling iron to smooth my curly hair into the "wings." My mother never let me grow my hair long; she said it was too curly and wild to be long. Note the Puca shell necklace, very popular at the time.
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6 of 7
Hanna Rosin
When I was growing up in Jamaica, Queens, an immigrant ghetto if ever there was one, Farrah was America. My brother dated only Puerto Rican girls although he, too, had Farrah up on his wall. To me, personally, Farrah represented both liberation and frustration. My Israeli mother started blow-drying my hair when I was 5. Feathering at least gave me a method to blow-dry my own way. But if you look closely, you can see it never really worked. With every rise in humidity, the Semitic curls betray me.
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7 of 7 Lizzie Skurnik
My mother brought me to a black salon RIGHT before my Bat Mitzvah (like the day), [where the hairdresser] gave me what I can only describe as a church haircut instead of just straightening it. That took months to grow out. Then my aunt, who delighted in making a begrudging white salon cut my grandmother's hair, brought me to THAT salon and they gave me this Farrah cut, which at the time was only still sported by matrons in N.J. Hairstyles pressed unsuccessfully on biracial hair may be an unexamined outpost in the land of cultural contructivism.
