The Ashcan

Dear Blanche: a love letter from a six-year-old

Posted on 04. Jun, 2010 by jessekg in Curiosities, modern relationships

When I was six-years-old my pre-pubescent (and some would say rather girlish and scrawny)  body used to play seriously mean tricks on me. And no, this is not some sick lead into a story about whatever it is you think I am going to say next. Rather, it’s about my then unhealthy crush on post-menopausal red heads on television. That’s right, at six-years-old I was in to 60-year-old gingers, and I blame television. In particular, I blame two shows – Who’s the Boss? and the Golden Girls.

this would have been a Freudian nightmare for six-year-old me:

the lady of my dreams (right) and the lady of my nightmares (left).

Of course the recent passing of Rue McClanahan, who I only ever knew as Blanche the Golden Girl, reminded me of this. I don’t know what it was about TV producers back then, but it just seems they wanted to mess with every six-year-old boy’s non-existent libido (there’s no way it was just me, right?) and fill gingered gramma’s dialogues with sexual innuendos, the repercussions of which I only understood until a few minutes ago (“oh, that’s why I married a red head!”) Of course the other cinnamon sexpot I am referring to would be Katherine Helmond, who I only ever knew as Mona Robinson up until I wikipedia’d ‘Mona Who’s the Boss.’ Ya, me and red grannies had a thing, except of course for Carol Burnett. She absolutely scared the shit out of me.

Oh Mona, so very francais of you

Anyways, when all my buddies would be talking about how much they liked Samantha (Alyssa Milano), all I could see was a little tom girl with a ball cap, a pony tail and an over-protective dad. It was Mona, the sexually liberated single with social care and a kick ass player’s apartment, who in my twisted little mind was the real catch. Obviously I would go back to my senses when Samantha grew up a little, especially when she went into soft core, and get over my hankering for Mona. But that wasn’t the case with Blanche Devereaux, with her Georgia peach accent and multiple boyfriends. Something about Blanche was different, and I think the following entry from wikipedia explains it:

On the show, Blanche was portrayed as a promiscuous woman, with her initials spelling out the word “BED.” She spent a great deal of her time with members of the opposite sex, and this was a source of both condemnation from and amusement to her roommates. Blanche’s seemingly liberated human sexual behavior was a contrast to the sexual climate of the 1980s, when AIDS was beginning to seep into a nation’s consciousness. However, in the episode “72 Hours,” it was mentioned that Blanche was cognizant of the dangers of HIV; she always used protection and knows every lover’s full sexual history. It was also inferred in one episode that she has had numerous interracial sexual liaisons with African-American men, though no such relations were ever depicted on camera.

Oh Blanche, you saucy lady of the night. Even your initials subliminally called out to me, as you galavanted around town with your numerous sexual conquests, brushing each one off with the aplomb of a raging slut. At 60 you behaved like a 23-year-old university student, and I loved you for it. I thought years of counselling had gotten me over my proclivities for ogling octogenarians (or I guess, at the time, sexagenarians – agh! more subliminal-ness), but now you pass on, and this video resurfaces, proving that I was right all along. I hope my childhood shrink is still alive.

Tags: Blanche, Carol Burnett is frightening, gingers, Golden Girls, grammas, Mona Robinson, red heads, Rue McClanahan, who's the boss