“Little House on the Prairie” was never one of my favorite television shows for a very specific reason: The series of books about a pioneer girl and her family, written by Laura Ingalls Wilder, was in fact one of my favorite pieces of literature.
I spent hours in the early 1970s devouring the autobiographical children’s stories and had a very specific idea of what “my” Laura looked and sounded like. That is the beauty of the written word: You get to create your own vision of the characters and aren’t constrained by Hollywood’s Velveeta version of authentic Gruyère.
So when I saw Melissa Gilbert in the role of my beloved heroine, I wasn’t impressed. Freckles, auburn hair — not the “mousy brown” of the book — and unusually prominent orthodontia shattered my image of the plucky Miss Ingalls.
Nonetheless, I was a faithful viewer for its almost decades-long run, simply because there weren’t that many wholesome depictions of children’s literature on network prime time.
A few years ago, I found Melissa Gilbert, now a grandmother, on Instagram and decided to follow her for old time’s sake.
That was a mistake. Whatever residual affection I had for her from our first encounter 50 years ago evaporated when I started reading her overtly political posts.
Laura hated Republicans? Laura supported abortion rights? Laura had rainbow flags and thought boys should be in girls’ bathroom spaces?
And then she, a Jewish woman, comes out suggesting rather forcefully that I, a Catholic woman, should be offended by a comical albeit tasteless AI image of Donald Trump as pope?
This woman, who lavished praise on “Catholic” Joe Biden, a man who blithely took communion while lobbying for a constitutional right to abortion, was telling me I had to be upset about a meme?
Unfollowed immediately, but not after trolling her for a week.
Alas, I didn’t get that opportunity with Valerie Bertinelli. She blocked me first.
A couple of years ago, I found the ’70s child star on social media, surrounded by her cats and pushing the Italian recipes from her nonna. This is promising, I thought.
I’d always had a girl crush on Barbara Cooper from “One Day at a Time,” wanted her hair, her wit, her decidedly unchubby figure in those unforgiving years, and her charm. Here, I figured, was a way to become “friends” without actually delving into stalker territory.
At first, it was fun. She had aged like Melissa Gilbert, put on a few pounds and, at almost my exact age, was experiencing similar post-menopausal angst.
But then she started hyperventilating about Donald Trump, which morphed into anger at Republicans, which devolved into not-so-subtle digs against people who follow dictators: me, Val? Me?
And she, of course, also pushed forcefully for abortion rights, was big on #MeToo and Black Lives Matter and showed all of us that Barbara Cooper was a card-carrying member of The Resistance. I suppose we should have figured that out back in 1975 when she had a shrine to Elton John.
I once pushed back on one of her political screeds and — “pouf!” — she was gone from my feed.
The irony is I met her a few years later when she came to a local bookstore with her newest cookbook, stood in a very long line for about an hour, and got her to sign the thing. She was all smiles.
Barbara Cooper had no idea that she had met the enemy and it was, to paraphrase FDR, me.
You might ask why I care. Why does it matter what strangers who I’ll likely never meet — unless they write a cookbook — think of me? It’s a good question. And the simple answer is, it doesn’t.
But there’s a more nuanced reason why seeing Laura, Barbara, and others like them express their disdain for people like me hurts.
These women filled my childhood, adolescence and young adulthood with a semblance of happiness. They presented mirrors in which I could see my aspirational self reflected.
There were no politics, no patronizing tweets, no cruel attacks on my morals and my decency. They inhabited characters with whom I could identify, and in the case of Bertinelli, who I wanted to be.
That girl represented my ideal teen when I first saw her flip that shiny, stuck straight chocolate hair in 1975.
And speaking of “That Girl,” my first real experience with disappointment was when my beloved Ann Marie aka Marlo Thomas came out as a feminist and, horror of horrors, friends of Gloria Steinem. I was about 10.
I should have seen the writing on the wall.
Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times in Pennsylvania. Her column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
