Ok. So I guess the topic is inexplicable crush. And I totally have one. It’s embarassing. But you know I gotta get it off my chest somehow. And I think the best way to do it is to confess it to a large audience where I will probably be the brunt of endless ridicule. But yeah, my first crush was Meredith Baxter. Yup. By the by, it’s not Meredith Baxter Birney anymore. Just Baxter. You see I keep up with this stuff. So, that’s weird, no? I mean, I don’t know. Most people think I’m pretty odd anyway so it would figure that I’d end up with a “Baxter Crush” as we call it in the business (ok, only I call it that). I was 5. And it was weird, cause it wasn’t totally like a sexual crush. I swear. Ask my therapist. We’ve been over this like 201 times. It troubled me a lot.
It was this secret I held inside, and if people knew - well, I don’t know. I mean most of this worry went on in high school and now that I think about it, if I said I had a crush on Meredith Baxter, students probably wouldn’t even know who that was and therefore no one would give a damn. I guess I didn’t think about that at the time. Oh well. Que sera, sera. Oops. Now we are in Doris Day territory. Let’s not go into that story. And I’m still working that one through with my therapist. Yup, $150 an hour to talk about Doris Day. Oh vey. Family Ties used to be on a lot in the 80s when I grew up. I was pretty obsessed with TV. Who’s the Boss? and Growing Pains. And a lot of Golden Girls and 227 and Fact’s of Life and Murder She Wrote and Falcon’s Crest. Yes, Falcon’s Crest - because there was a matriarch instead of say a JR Ewing or Blake Carrington. I watched these shows. A lot. And the shows I watched had main female characters that I totally crushed on.
So I guess we started with Meredith Baxter and we have ended with 80s television and women. So I’m left more in this general category of saying that I “crushed” on female characters from 80s sitcoms. I also wanted to soften the focus on Meredith Baxter so I don’t get some kind of threatening letter demanding me to stay 50 miles from her. Now, I really wanted to get this perfect, so I looked up “crush” - I came up with “temporary love of an adolescent” and “a strong positive emotion of regard and affection.” WOW. It totally fits what I went through. I was an adolescent when I started to realize I had some strange love for TV women of the 80s. Whew. I finally got that phrase off my chest. But the love WOULD probably best be characterized by the “positive emotion and affection” part. The “temporary adolescent” part? Is 22 adolescent? Well, the crushing part did leave me later in life. Cause I began to be able to explain it. Now I was worried about this part. Cause I didn’t think then it could fall under “inexplicable”.
So I looked up “inexplicable”. And here was the definition, “Difficult or impossible to explain or account for.” Well I’ll be damned, explanations could be included so long as they were difficult. So I COULD explain. But it had to be difficult. And I guess it will be difficult to explain cause the crush seems so crazy but I think it’ll make a lot of sense. Hopefully. My therapist’s reputation depends on it.I mean I’m happy I have an explanation (I assure you it’s difficult). Because if you can’t explain something, what the hell are you going to write about? It might make your story very, very, very short. But yeah, the 80s women characters - as exemplified by Meredith Baxter, Judith Light, Joanna Kearns - what was the connection? Not just that they all frequently appear on Lifetime TV. They all come across as strong women. I wouldn’t say masculine. Just strong. But also feminine - for lack of a better word. I knew there was something really good going on there. They were all women - but they were also strong. And you know it took a long time for TV to come around to the realization that women could be beautiful and feminine and still be strong. They didn’t have to take on a male persona (unless they wanted to) to be strong.
I don’t think anyone would say those women were manly. But yes, they had strength. What is a strong woman? Look, it would take a bunch more paragraphs to explain this and give you the benefits of a Vassar education in Women’s Studies. Maybe it is best left unsaid here so that people can think about it – it is an important topic to explore as society is moving backwards at a very fast pace in many, many areas including this one. And it’s taken me 7 years in therapy to come to an understanding that I deeply, deeply admire strong women. And to realize that I wanted to be that. And to realize - you know what? I am.
