I wrote a column several years ago discussing teen boy stars and how the girls of my era worshipped them. That piece came to mind the other day when a mom was complaining about her “boy-crazed” daughter and some Facebook page and TikTok videos she drooled over.
Back in my day, it was a magazine called Tiger Beat. Even then I aspired to be a journalist, and I understood such magazines were not even a reasonable facsimile of real journalism. My friends understood the literary shortcomings of Tiger Beat, too, but they liked it, because it was full of pictures of cute boy-stars. And they all liked the cute boy-stars. I didn’t.
I liked boys, although I denied it. The lie was engineered to protect both myself and any potential suitors from my dad, who didn’t believe girls should “think” about boys until the late teens. By “think,” he meant the open expression of the thought, which could lead to something dreadful like holding hands at basketball games.
The boy-stars posed no such threat, but mooning after them would have invited ridicule from my father and uncles. Besides, I was more pragmatic. While I might be able to hold hands with the geeky, four-eyed, freckle-faced kid in the desk across the aisle, that wasn’t about to happen with a boy-star, so why bother pretending it could? Every other teenage girl the world over had a different viewpoint. I now know they were the norm; I was the weirdo.
My first clash over boy-stars came in the fifth grade, when Lisa Ford, Glinda Johnson and I were walking back to the Fort Gibson grade school from the band room, which was three or four blocks away. They were talking about Bobby Sherman, whose claim to fame was a role on the TV show, “Here Come the Brides.” I had never seen it, because during a good part of my childhood years, we had no TV. But I had seen his picture in my friends’ copies of Tiger Beat. I had heard his singing on the radio. And I had heard their breathless rhapsodizing over him. As far as I was concerned, Bobby Sherman was an old man, and I told Lisa and Glinda so.
They stopped in their tracks, and Lisa said incredulously, “You don’t like Bobby Sherman?!”
“Well, no,” I said matter-of-factly.
They glared at me in disdain, and took off running toward the grade school, leaving me to walk by myself.
This was the start of one of those “we’re-mad-at-her” episodes, peculiar to gaggles of young girls, which miraculously render the target invisible for up to a week. It’s no fun being the “mad-at” girl, because – as The Eagles famously sang – you have to eat your lunch all by yourself. Not to mention walk to and from band by yourself. So I tried hard not to disparage boy-stars after that.
In sixth grade, Bobby was out, and David Cassidy, the bell-bottom-clad darling of “The Partridge Family,” was in. At that point, we did have a TV, and I did see the show, but I wasn’t any more enthralled with David than I was with Bobby.
Then, Susan Martin introduced us to Donny Osmond, who was closer to our age, and thus made more sense as a potential boyfriend. Still, he wasn’t my cup of tea – mainly because he was out of reach for me, if not for Susie, but also because his teeth kind of freaked me out. Those couldn’t be real. But when Susan invited me over to listen to the album, I tried to make all the appropriate comments, even if I didn’t work up any blissful sighs.
Later that year, I had a slumber party at our old farmhouse, and among the entourage were Glinda, Susan and Lisa, plus a few others stalwart enough to put up with the mice, the roaches, the creaky noises and my eccentricities. This was a “BYOTB” party, because they knew I didn’t have any Tiger Beats. Within moments of their arrival, the girls were putting up posters on my bedroom walls of David, Donny, and a newcomer to the scene, Leif Garrett.
Once about 10 or 12 posters were up, Lisa raised her hands to silence the cacophony. “OK, OK,” she said. “Now, everyone pick a poster, and KISS IT!” I was too embarrassed to comply, but every other girl did, rushing the walls and planting busses on their two-dimensional idols. (The “thwock-thwock-thwocks” reminded me of the sound after the Lord’s Supper at the Baptist Church, when hundreds of thimble-sized glasses hit the holders on the backs of the pews after the grapejuice had been knocked back.) Later, when we were undressing to put on our nightclothes, I jokingly told Glinda, “Hey, I think Donny’s looking at you.” She dramatically flung her arms wide, and in her typical comic fashion, she announced, “If he likes what he sees, let him LOOK!”
A year or so later, at that same haunted house, my sister hosted a slumber party as a love-fest for the Bay City Rollers, who were going to appear on The Midnight Special. Several of her friends brought posters from Tiger Beat and little strips of plaid, which they waved frantically in front of the black-and-white TV, screaming and crying for one Roller or another. I could only shake my head. I didn’t think ANY of the BCRs were cute. Their pants were too short and they had funny hair.
The Midnight Special ended its run in 1981, and the most recent photo I saw of Donny Osmond was about 15 stories high, with sister Marie, on the front of Harrah’s in Las Vegas last October.
Last I heard of David Cassidy, he he had passed away in 2017.
I think Bobby Sherman is a reserve police officer and deputy in Los Angeles. Teenagers these days don’t have a clue who they are, nor do they care. Recently I told the daughter of a friend how popular Leif Garrett used to be. The girl, who knows Leif as one of the clowns on “World’s Dumbest,” wailed, “Eeeeyew!”
As for Tiger Beat, I haven’t seen it around, but that may be because I don’t spend much time at the magazine racks. I can tell you this, though: If they’d have me, I think I could come up with some pretty good copy for them. If the price is right.
Kim Poindexter is executive editor of the Tahlequah (Okla.) Daily Press and a regional editor for CNHI Oklahoma.