[ed. Sometimes you fall down a rabbit hole doing this blog stuff. I don't get HBO so wasn't aware that Diana Rigg is still going strong on Game of Thrones. When I was young, Mrs. Peel in The Avengers was the first woman to make me realize that the other sex might have qualities that (for some strange reason) seemed irresistably and uncomfortably interesting.]
To me, she was and always will be Emma Peel, the brainy, fiercely courageous, impossibly sexy, black-leather clad British secret agent she portrayed in the popular 1960s TV show, “The Avengers,” who captivated and haunted me from the time I first watched her as a little girl in Brooklyn and could never outgrow or forget or leave behind.
“Mrs. Peel, we’re needed.”
How I lived for those words each week. They were a staple of the show, that moment when her partner, the dapper John Steed, would turn to her for help in solving a chilling crime, or to confront a sinister set of bad guys. She would appear, ever so elegant in her Mod outfits—form-fitting hip-huggers, white boots, topped with a jaunty beret or Carnaby hat, the newsboy cap that was all the rage.
Most often, she wore her hair loose—it was thick and lustrous, a deep shade of auburn, and she was constantly brushing it off her face, one of her many gestures I sought to emulate.
Mine was no garden-variety girlhood crush. It was a full-fledged obsession.
by Lucette Lagnado, WSJ | Read more:
Images via: here and here
