Farrah

It's been a while since I first started this post.

Farrah Fawcett is dead. Fawcett never meant that much to me. I am too young to remember her from the red bathing suit days. I only remember the woman desperately clinging onto a life and self image based completely on her looks, even as those looks were being morphed through time and surgery. To me Farrah Fawcett will always be a cautionary tale of how sad and empty appearance based self worth is, even for someone who reached the very heights of success for her smile and hair.

It was pretty glossed over in the gauzy obits, but most people know she died of anal cancer. What wasn't reported, was that anal cancer is mostly linked to HPV which is a sexually transmitted disease. It surprised me in today's TMZ world that this wasn't even mentioned, much less harped on endlessly by the tabloids. If she had been a gay man, you can bet they'd never shut up about it. Actually, I'm totally surprised, even in her case. It's interesting. You can imagine how cruel and crass people could be about it. I'm certainly glad Extra didn't spend the whole time implying she deserved it or did it to her self. People's sexual habits should not be used against them, especially not at times like that. But is it still weird and stigmatizing to hide it?

If she's had ovarian cancer, also linked to HPV, I very much doubt they'd feel the need to be hush hush about it. In fact, in recent years, there's been a big push to get young girls vaccinated for HPV because of it's link to ovarian cancer. Which seems like a good thing. Wouldn't Farrah's story have been an opportunity to educate women and girls, like Rock Hudson did for AIDS? I get it that it should have been her choice and I'm glad they respected that, but it does feel like weird slut shaming somehow, that even whilst she did documentaries from her sickbed there was no discussion of her actual disease, because someone somewhere might think she did anal.