Swingin' chicks

Michelle Phillips and Mamie Van Doren talk about being decade-defining dames.

By Stephen Lemons

Jan 29, 2001 | I confess, I had a hard-on for Patty Hearst. Damn it, I still do! Despite the complexities of her case and the harm done by her Symbionese Liberation Army captors back in the day, there's something about that footage of a gun-toting "Tania" storming the Sunset branch of the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco or the famous photo of her posed before the SLA flag that sums up the sexiness of '70s women and makes me horny as hell.

The same goes for all the other bell-bottom-wearing babes of that era: Squeaky Fromme and Laraine Newman; Jodie Foster and Angela Davis; Stevie Nicks and Joan Didion; MacKenzie Phillips and Karen Allen; and so on. Though usually thin and out of shape (no one exercised back then, thank God), they all seemed so radical, intelligent and hip. Even to this day, I'm haunted by them. Today's women don't quite seem to live up to their legends. No doubt this is because the cultural ascendancy of those me-decade femmes intersected with my then nascent interest in the opposite sex.

My theory is that we're ruined by the sex objects we encounter once masturbation becomes our adolescent raison d'être. Your babysitter, your parents' best friends or the folks on the tube night after night, that's who you lust after. Because of the sweater queens of the '50s, guys who grew up then are often, well, tit fiends. For me, it was the fleshy yet anorexic, coke-snortin' nymphomaniacs of the "Boogie Nights" decade who yanked my crank. But for Chris Strodder, author of the recent coffee-table compendium "Swinging Chicks of the '60s," it was those go-go-boots-wearin', candy-colored miniskirt-sportin' nymphs of the Age of Aquarius who left him pie-eyed with infatuation.

"These were women who, it seemed to me, set some sort of standard and represented the times," says Strodder, 44, of the 101 '60s chicks chronicled in his tome. "There were a few with an edge like Grace Slick or Janis Joplin, but most were like Goldie Hawn -- spirited and fun, laughing and colorful, always expressing themselves with great haircuts and style. A teenybopper in an orange miniskirt, that's typical. Like the British model/actress Twiggy. You could just look at a picture of Twiggy and say, 'Wow, that's 1966!'"

Born of his Swingin' Chicks Web site, which has garnered raves from Yahoo, USA Today and Details magazine and spotlights more than 170 female '60s stars, the book is a softcover, psychedelic catalog of '60s crème de la crème. From Julie Newmar and Mary Tyler Moore to Raquel Welch and Angie Dickinson, Strodder leaves no lava lamp unturned in his quest for the perfect women. There's Agent 99 of "Get Smart," aka Barbara Feldon; "Mod Squad" TV narc Peggy Lipton; Paul McCartney's one-time fiancée, the pale, auburn-haired Jane Asher; busty bombshell Raquel Welch; and the ill-fated Sharon Tate and the striking, ever-classy Jacqueline Bisset.

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