Tawny Kitaen died in May. Either this means nothing to you or else you have a very specific mental image of her and are feeling a little old. (She was, as it happens, only 59, which still makes me feel old but not as old as it could.) At the time, I decided I couldn’t get five paragraphs about her—that’s my requirement, you see—but I wanted to talk about her a little more generally. And then I forgot and only just remembered. Because what I discovered while poking around was that Tawny Kitaen had decided early on what she wanted from life and went out and got it, and I’m not sure that’s what people expected.
Julie Ellen Kitaen started calling herself “Tawny” at age twelve. At fourteen, she got a backstage pass to a Peter Frampton concert and saw the treatment give to Penny McCall, Frampton’s partner. She decided that was what she wanted from life. She was fortunate enough to both be the high school sweetheart of Robbin Crosby from Ratt and to be exceptionally beautiful. She did some modeling and acting, and despite having played the woman Tom Hanks was going to marry in Bachelor Party, she’s really best known for dancing across the hoods of two cars in a music video.
Is that how I’d like to be best known? No. No, it is not—though goodness knows I’d like the physical ability she shows in that video. But she was doing exactly what she wanted. She wanted to be a rock star’s girlfriend, and she was. It’s not a goal everyone can reach, but I have no interest in shaming her for having achieved it and being famous for it if it’s what she wanted. Maybe being a rock star’s girlfriend isn’t For The Betterment Of Humanity, but arguably neither is being a rock star. I don’t think we can dispute that she provided enjoyment to an awful lot of people in her day, either, and that’s not nothing.
Genuinely, all kinds of people are out there living what they think of as their best life and getting culturally shamed for it. Some of them annoy me more than others—creating Garfield for the merchandising rights is awfully cynical, for example—but also I don’t think those people are necessarily taking joy on the level that Kitaen was. Because after all, if she wasn’t out there curing cancer, well, she wasn’t really hurting people, either. You can argue, and I’d agree with you, that the imagery used in a lot of music videos is toxic to women, but it’s hardly as though that was her doing or as though she was the worst example.
There’s a bit in LA Story where Sara talks about how no one in Los Angeles is looking to the outside for verification that what they’re doing is all right. I don’t think that’s universally true. I also don’t think it’s universally desirable. What is true is that there are people who decide on life choices because it’s what they want and don’t worry about what the rest of the world thinks. I don’t think Tawny Kitaen was exactly worried about the people shaming her. And again, since she wasn’t hurting anyone, more power to her.
My seven-year-old son wants to be a gamer when he grows up. He doesn’t worry about people who tell him that it’s impractical; it’s what he wants from life, and the idea makes him happy. I don’t know that he’ll stick to it; I don’t know that it’s a job that will still exist when he’s an adult. But if it’s something he enjoys and something he can do that keeps him fed, housed, and clothed, well, good for him. We have this belief that doing what you love is only good when it’s certain jobs, and if your job is silly, you should be doing something “better” even if what you’re doing pays the bills and makes you happy. Good for Tawny Kitaen for not falling for that.
