Saying Goodbye to the Icons of My Youth

June 27, 2009 by lisa  
Filed under lifestyle & entertainment, philippines

In 1977, when I was in 1st year high school, I had Farrah Fawcett hair! Yup, every woman had the same hair style just as everyone was glued to the local television network weekly waiting for Charlie’s Angels to show during prime time with women identifying with one or all three of those oh, so empowered women.

In Baguio, we would get daily episodes of Charlie’s Angels on the Far East Network (FEN) — along with US soap operas that did not make it to local Philippine TV — that free entertainment service given by the United States to all its servicemen overseas, whenever I would be up on weeks-long vacations to the Summer Capital of the Philippines. Since Camp John Hay, along with other American military bases and recreational facilities, was still being run by the United States Air Force, the rest of the City of Pines would get the same signal and shows as the rest. That was when Baguio was very much “Little America.”

In private Catholic high school, we wore pleated skirts with deep pockets where, invariably a roller brush (was that device actually invented so we could copy Farrah’s hair?) or a Denman brush would be on standby (never mind Springmaid because imported hair brushes “with technology” were all the rage then), ready to be whipped out any time so we could have or maintain “fly-away” tresses all day. Because of this everyone looked like they had a large right thigh.

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