'70s Wall Candy: Titillation Times Two

Two swimsuit-clad sex symbols dominated teenage desire throughout much of the '70s.

The ubiquitous 1976 Farrah Fawcett poster adorned the walls of many of my peers’ bedrooms. It was pure titillation.

You know the poster. It came out when I was 15, and it showed a 29-year-old Farrah wearing a red one-piece bathing suit in front of a striped Mexican serape.

It sold 12 million copies during its initial run. The poster is still available on Amazon.

Its legacy includes appearances in the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever and the 1997 film Boogie Nights, as well as the creation of a 2011 Barbie collector’s doll that reenacts the poster image.

We won’t need any reenactments of what happened in those boys’ bedrooms.

Hippie Magician Doug Henning;
I had this poster on the back
of my bedroom door

I did not have a Farrah Fawcett poster in my teenage bedroom. I was into magic then, and my many posters featured the popular illusionist, Doug Henning. My parents would have been thrilled to get me a Farrah Fawcett poster, but I had my eyes on magic—and on Mark Spitz.

Perhaps it was not quite as iconic as the Farrah Fawcett poster, but around 1972, when Spitz won 7 gold medals at the Munich Olympics, an image of him wearing only a red, white, and blue Speedo, with 7 medals draped around his neck, appeared everywhere. He sported a mustache that we would today call a “porn ’stache.”

I was only 11 then, but the poster stayed around long enough to become part of my adolescence. It sold about 5 million copies.

At Oakwood Club, where I spent my summers by the pool, the lifeguards used the subterranean boiler room as a makeshift break room. There were male and female lifeguards; the boys had the Farrah poster, and the girls had the Mark Spitz poster.

I occasionally ventured out of bounds into that boiler room and can still feel the heat from the boilers—and remember that Spitz poster. The Fawcett one left me cold. 

Looking back, these posters featuring athletic bodies in swimsuits weren't all that innocent. They didn't suppress desire but intensified it. 

You’d have to look at the Doug Henning posters in my bedroom to see the magic of sublimation.

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