Oliver Lee Bateman muses on the love of his teenage life – Baywatch’s Yasmeen Bleeth – and the great time he would’ve shown her on a date with his fourteen year-old self.
This post is from a series of posts in which our bloggers answer the question: Who Was Your Teen Dream Date?
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away[1], I was obsessed with the thought of Yasmeen Bleeth. Not the character she played on Baywatch, not the person she was in real life—just the thought of her. I followed her ups and downs in the tabloids—my father had an insatiable thirst for celebrity gossip, and so our house was always well-stocked with back issues of National Enquirer and Globe—and scavenged for .jpegs of her on the Netscape Navigator web browser. What did I know about Yasmeen Bleeth in those days? I knew she had a weight problem; I knew the Baywatch producers had to make special suit to accommodate her overflowing figure; I knew she refused to appear in Playboy; I knew one of her parents was Jewish. I knew all of this, and yet I did not know her.
Had my 14 year-old self gone on a date with Yasmeen Bleeth, what would we have talked about? “Yasmeen, are you interested in pro wrestling? Like with Big Van Vader and Dusty Rhodes and whatnot?” I might have asked her. I doubt she’d have anything to say in reply, but I’d continue in this direction anyway. “I’m really into a cool play-by-e-mail game—we call it e-wrestling—and I, uh, manage or ‘handle’ a character named Eddy Jacks. He’s a 400 pound man with a beard.” Maybe she’d smile at me while listening patiently; maybe she’d ask me if I wanted her autograph in as patronizing a tone of voice as she could manage.[2]
Writing from the vantage point of 2012, it’s difficult for me to reconstruct why I was fascinated with her. For reasons too complicated and also too banal to warrant discussion here, I didn’t have so much as a one-on-one conversation with a girl during high school. I suppose I was one of those horndog teens who winds up humping an apple pie; I suppose I found her measurements more appealing than those of Internet “it girl”Cindy Margolis. Our hypothetical first date would have gone poorly, but please don’t hold that against her: I was a total loser, after all.
[1] I was reading those Timothy Zahn Star Wars novels back then, so this opener, however clichéd, is apposite.
[2] Which wouldn’t be all that patronizing, come to think. Notwithstanding her late-career revival on Nash Bridges and star turn in Baseketball, she wasn’t a very good actress.
Who was your Teen Dream Girl?
For more Teen Dream Dates, read Todd Mauldin’s Win A Date With Molly Rinwald - and submit your own, too!
About Oliver Lee Bateman
First off, I’ve never “met” anyone whose initials are also a football position. Cool!
Secondly, you were not alone in your Yasmine thing. I dug her, too. Says a lot about Hollywood that she had a “weight problem.” Most women probably woulda been alright with having her figure.
Oh yeah, I remember her being hounded for that “weight problem.” It certainly wasn’t as big of a problem as her cocaine problem, seeing as how that was a real problem and all. I do remember, however, that one of the primary tabloid criticisms of her during the period where she was struggling with drug addiction was that she had gotten too thin (a “scary skinny,” in National Enquirer parlance).
This is why we feel so fucked, as women. It’s like, “Oh first you don’t like my huge tits and sluggly belly, and now you don’t like my ribs and skinny elbows. Go fuck yourself.”
Just sayin’