David Cassidy and the Middle-Aged Women in Mourning
December 7, 2017
By Carol Kaplan
www.huffingtonpost.com
David Cassidy, teen idol, at the height of his fame in the early 1970’s
You may not have noticed amid the scandals plaguing the country right now from Hollywood to Washington, DC, but millions of middle-aged women are in mourning. As you flip from FOX News to CNN to catch up on the latest disgusting revelations about men in power sexually harassing or abusing women, Russian election meddling, subpoenas and guilty pleas, some of us are tuning it all out. That’s because when David Cassidy, our teen idol, died on November 21st, our world came to a screeching halt.
You didn’t notice us because, well, lots of people just don’t notice middle-aged women. But that lady in your office who’s sitting in her cubicle eating her microwaved lunch — she’s one of them. The lady wearing sneakers with her dress and carrying a tote bag on the metro — she’s one, too. She may be the lady at the cash register at Walmart. She could even be the woman in the board room of some Wall Street bank for all we know. But right now, we all have one thing in common: we’re in a bit of a fog. A little out of sorts. Something in our world is out of place because the teen idol we grew up worshipping is absent. A star’s light suddenly dimmed. And now everything seems off kilter.
For those of you who never knew him or never understood his appeal, let me explain. David Cassidy was the rock star without Elvis’ ostentation. He was the Beatle without the beard. He didn’t expound on the Vietnam war. He didn’t weigh in on Nixon or campus riots. He came after the British invasion and before Watergate. He came after the rebellion of Woodstock and before the drug-fueled decadence of Disco. He lived in that tiny slice of late 20th century America where innocence still reigned.
He wasn’t muscle-bound or mustachioed. (I don’t remember him having whiskers at all!) He didn’t have the gravelly screech of some rockers. His sweet, soft voice sounded like how we imagined (hoped!) a future boyfriend would whisper sweet nothings in our ears. There was absolutely nothing threatening or even controversial about David Cassidy and that was why we loved him. David Cassidy was - in our minds, at least - attainable. That was the appeal, even if we couldn’t articulate it back then. Every girl imagined David Cassidy (or rather, Keith Partridge, the character he played) as her boyfriend. He was sweet, funny, respectful and trustworthy. Most of all, he was sexy without trying.
After the show that made him famous, The Partridge Family, went off the air, I lost track of him. It wasn’t for lack of trying. Before the internet, news about teen idols was limited to monthly magazines like Tiger Beat. If you were lucky enough, your mother bought you a copy. If not, you borrowed one from a friend and hid it under your pillow like boys hid copies of Playboy. It’s not that these teeny bopper magazines were bad — it’s that they were private. Like a note from a boy at school, it was something to savor and fantasize about when you were alone.
From time to time I’d catch a glimpse of Cassidy on some talk show on TV. In the last few years, it was hard to watch. I don’t know if it was the drinking, the stress, or just time, but I remember being shocked that my teen idol had become old. How could that possibly happen? Elvis and John Lennon (among others) will forever be young in our memories because they died young. But if David Cassidy got old, did that mean I had, too?
Now, millions of David Cassidy fans - women roughly between 55 and 65 - are in state of loss, of confusion and mourning. Be easy on us. As the country grapples with political leaders, movie stars and Hollywood moguls who use their power to belittle, harass and abuse women, we are feeling misty for the old days when at least one of our heroes seemed to never threaten us. He made us feel respected and we trusted him. We didn’t just think we loved you, David Cassidy. We knew it.
