Or, maybe better known as the Best of the Breast…
If you think men are pigs now, let me take you back to a time during the early to mid 1970’s when the term "boob tube” wasn’t all that far off.
First, a little history is in order.
Actually, television in the early 70’s started out pretty good. There were many shows that had what we might now call a “social conscience” that tried to blend humor with the events of the day. All in the Family forced us to look at our prejudices, M*A*S*H made us look at the horrors of war through a new set of eyeballs. The Mary Tyler Moore show gave us a dose of feminism and Good Times gave us a peek at life in the ghetto.
Apparently though, America has a
short attention span or maybe it didn’t like to look too closely at the mirror and see what was going on in the world so naturally the executives in charge of the television programming decided a little tits and ass were just the distraction that young men (ages 18 to 35, the
target audience) needed and thus was born an era of what became known as “jiggle television.”
So, instead of poking fun at social issues and ourselves, American views were treated to such “classic” television series as:
Charlie's Angels - ““When the show was number three, I figured it was our acting. When it got to be number one, I decided it could only be because none of us wears a bra.” - Farrah Fawcett-Majors on Charlie’s Angels.
Three's Company - Suzanne Somers dazzles America with a wide variety of cut off jeans and enough cleavage to put the Grand Canyon to shame.
Logan's Run -“ “They have to be careful with the camera with this costume… When I bend over they’re in trouble” – That was what “star” Heather Menzies had to say about the mini skirt she wore during the shows run and the alarming number of times it was prone to flying upwards.The Love Boat - Heather Locklear, Morgan Fairchild and a host of young 70’s mostly blond bombshells graced the small screen in those days in a variety of revealing outfits.
Wonder Woman - Thin on plot lines and even thinner on wardrobe this show brought us a variety of poses of Linda Carter wearing her daisy dukes and transforming into the scantily clad superhero at least once or twice per episode. Wonder woman also seemed to get in an inordinately amount of tight situations where she was, uh, shall we say, in bondage.
The recipe for success at the time seemed simple. The young female lead actress would either appear in a bikini or some other revealing bathing suit, a negligee or underwear and when all else fails, naked under a towel during each and every show.
I don’t watch that much television except for the news and sports so I don’t know if the networks could get away with that shit today.
And that’s probably a good thing.