Upon discovering my current favorite “new” podcast First Thirst — in which guests talk about their first celebrity crushes, and what if anything that says about who they are today — I found myself thinking back to the various media figures kid me had a crush on, and wondering if there was a through line. (Spoilers: there’s not, I don’t think.)
What was more surprising than anything, I think, was trying to think back to childhood celebrity crushes and struggling to think of any before when I was, say, 12 or so. I can think of precisely one — Marmalade Atkins as played by Charlotte Coleman, whom I just found out died astonishingly young at age 33, which I find surprisingly sad for someone I hadn’t given any thought to in literally decades. I daren’t look back at any video of the old Marmalade Atkins TV shows for fear of utter embarrassment and shame at whatever was going on in my 7- and 8-year-old brain at the time.
At least Marmalade was flesh-and-blood, as opposed to so many of my latter “celebrity” crushes, the majority of whom weren’t just fictional, but comic book characters: I’m enough of a cliche that of course I fell for the charms of the X-Men’s Rogue, all faux Southern accent and a bashful personality matched with bombastic body and unrealistic hair that demanded the eye’s attention whenever she appeared on the page. (I was shy too, and wished I had someone like that was real, and would notice me! Ah, the embarrassing mindset of the pubescent mess I was.) My crush on Lois Lane probably started around here, too, and that one has persisted on and off for decades; those who know why, know.
I picked up my first issue of Deadline in 1989, aged 14, and almost immediately had a crush on Pippa from Wired World, a fact that Chloe — who not only looks like Pippa but holds her up as an inspiration in multiple ways — finds endlessly amusing to this day.
In amongst all of this, though, were the non-celebrity crushes, the people I ran into in real life and pined for silently. Far more than any fictional or televisual crush, these were the figures that shaped me and my desires entirely unknowing, because I never ever came out and told them how much I liked them. To do so was to risk rejection and embarrassment, as I was all too aware of at the time. (Especially as I was far from the most charming or attractive child on the playground; some things never change.) Perhaps I should have paid more attention to all the unreal crush potential in my world at the time. They would never have rejected me; they didn’t even know I existed, after all.