There’s been a lot of ink spilled on the death of Farrah Fawcett—even the august New York Times has more than half a page today. Like the rest of the mainstream media, it gingerly avoids the n-word: nipple. But nipples are why Farrah Fawcett signifies; she embodied quite an important cultural shift in US society.
I kinda stopped watching teevee before Charlie’s Angels came out, but I’ve never heard anyone argue that it was one of the great masterpieces of the medium or that, with better politics, the then FFM would have rivaled Vanessa Redgrave or Jane Fonda.
Cultural achievement was not why the red swimsuit poster became ubiquitous in the late ‘70s. It was because you could see her nipples right through the damn fabric.