“It may be the most famous pinup poster of all time. Farrah Fawcett’s smile is a row of impossibly white teeth so perfectly aligned they look machine-made, her hair a windblown blond tangle that swallows her slender hand.
“Then there is her nipple: a salacious nub straining against the nylon of her red one-piece. Its appearance marked the advent of “nippling.” Whenever a model applies ice to her breast before a photo shoot, she’s paying homage to Farrah.
“This was more than just a poster; it was an icon of its era, the image that crystallized the carefree sexuality of the anything-goes ’70s.
“For Farrah, of course, it helped launch a career. When the pinup was shot, she was not yet one of Charlie’s Angels. She had turned heads in commercials for Noxzema and the Mercury Cougar, but she was best known in her role as the wife of The Six Million Dollar Man, Lee Majors. The poster made her an It Girl. It sold more than 5 million copies — making it the best-selling wall art of all time — and forever imprinted Farrah on the libidinal subconscious of an entire generation of teenage boys.
“For Mike and Ted Trikilis, the two Ohio brothers who created the pinup, it was the engine that powered a multimillion-dollar poster empire called Pro Arts Inc. Before Farrah, they were just a couple of college dropouts, trying to make a quick buck selling black-light posters to hippies at Kent State. After her, they became celebrities in their own right, star-makers whose services were highly sought by Hollywood. Ted was even crowned “King of the Posters” by The Washington Post.”
Here’s the rest of the Cleveland Scene story.
2 Comments
every time i see that poster i think of that old steve martin bit where he was talking about working up the courage to ask her out, only to have her shoot him down… “the nerve of her, after all that time i spent holding her poster up with one hand!”
I find this poster intriguing from a sociological standpoint. In today’s world, Farrah’s body would be considered too soft for poster girl promotion. She clearly has not been doing Pilates or lifting weights (nor has she had a boob job). You could bounce a quarter off the abs of most “poster” girls today. I prefer Farrah’s thin, but more realistic look.