Those Liberated Angels

• Share

The first letter I ever wrote was a fan letter. I was six years old. I don't remember what the letter said, but I remember the envelope. It was addressed to "Farrah, Hollywood." My mother yanked it out of the mailbox, explaining the concept of the street address. We lived on what the Post Office called a "rural route"--a dirt road in Oklahoma that had no house numbers. But I still think that letter would have reached its addressee. In 1976 one couldn't avoid knowing who the Farrah in Hollywood was. Charlie's Angels was my favorite television show. And, with apologies to Gloria Steinem, I think Charlie's Angels, along with The Bionic Woman and Wonder Woman, made me a feminist. Ms. Bionic (Lindsay Wagner), the original Sporty Spice, called her fan club an "action club," and one Halloween I went as Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter) because she was a little girl's dress-up dream: she wore jewelry, but her magical bracelets could maim.

Thanks to the new movie version of Charlie's Angels, which opens this week, interest in the three detectives of Charles Townsend Private Investigations has been rekindled. Hoping to cash in, the cable channel TV Land has been airing a lot of old Angels episodes. I hadn't seen one since childhood. So the other day I tuned in, curious to know whether my liberation memories would match up with the actual product, especially now that I have de Beauvoir and Ferraro and riot grrl under my belt. The episode was called Target: Angels. Kelly (Jaclyn Smith), Sabrina (Kate Jackson) and Jill (Farrah Fawcett) are being shot at by an enemy of Charlie's. I am delighted to report that I could see what I once saw. Jill coaches a girls' basketball team; Kelly breaks up with boyfriend Tom Selleck to protect him from gunfire; and when Sabrina's ex-husband tells the women, "I think you're all nuts," Sabrina replies, "I know, sweetheart. That's the reason we don't play house anymore." The only thing missing is a montage set to Loretta Lynn's song The Pill.

The show's male admirers may have loved watching three pretty women solve crimes in skimpy clothes, but I was obsessed with it for another reason: all I ever wanted was a job. In 1976, other than my first-grade teacher, every woman of my small-town acquaintance was a housewife or a widowed housewife. The Angels not only had jobs, they had jobs within their jobs, often going undercover as hotel maids or race-car drivers or roller-derby players. And they were friends. That was the life I wanted, getting paid to do projects with your favorite people.

The summer following the show's first season, my family went on vacation and stopped at the Continental Divide. When my dad was posing my sister and me for a photo, I switched places to be on the western side of the divide because that was "closer to Los Angeles." In L.A., one could live all by oneself in a "security building" like Sabrina or in a beach house like Jill. Granted, as a grownup the closest I ever got was a one-bedroom across from Lake Michigan. But still I got the career-girl life I dreamed of. Sometimes I even get paid to watch TV.

Sarah Vowell can be heard on public radio's This American Life