WHEN IT COMES TO ’90S HEARTHROBS: TONYA HARDING WINS THE GOLD EVERY TIME
The ’90s gave me a whole smorgasbord of heartthrobs.
You had Julia Roberts, from the hot redhead fantasy upscale prostitute in Pretty Woman to her straight-up smoking hot character in My Best Friend’s Wedding. You had the all-American dream-girl types as well, most of which appeared in Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit edition. The list is too long to list, but I’ll throw in Uptown Girl Christie Brinkley and Kathy Ireland for starters.
And then there was my little detour into TGIF territory, where I realized I apparently had a soft spot for girls who looked like they probably live in a double-wide with wood paneling. The most slept-on TGIF girl? Gia. You remember Stephanie Tanner’s friend on Full House. She made “trashy” feel hot to my 13-year-old self. While most of my peers were team Topanga, I was over here eyeing Gia.
I also went through a phase where I was obsessed with the model on the Ween Chocolate and Cheese album cover. It was basically fake boobs, a Ween wrestling belt, and no head pictured, but when you’re hitting puberty and your brain is full of baby batter, it was plenty enough to whack off to. Maybe it was something to do with curiosity about not seeing her head, kind of like the Nanny on Muppet Babies. You knew she had these banging long legs and a slender body, but what about the rest of her?
Let’s get a few of the obvious ‘90s heartthrobs out of the way so I don’t get called out. Everybody my age obviously went through the Pamela Anderson stage as well as the Jenna Jameson stage. Ok, that’s out of the way.
My high school years found me crushing on female musicians like Shirley Manson of Garbage, Alanis Morissette, and the singer for the Cardigans wasn’t too shabby
But with all the Sports Illustrated swimsuit models, TGIF crushes, and every other brand of ’90s hotness… nobody, and I mean nobody, had it going on like Tonya Harding.
Tonya was the perfect blend of white trash and athletic ability. She was a unicorn. She could win a competition reserved for the social elite and then look like she could go kick your cousin’s ass in a Waffle House parking lot right afterward, which is exactly why I believe her when she said she had nothing to do with the January 1994 attack on Nancy Kerrigan. Tonya would have handled business on her own and not relied on her husband and his goons.
I swear *NSYNC was talking about her when they sang, “God must’ve spent a little more time on you.”
So yeah, the ’90s gave us a full buffet of heartthrobs… but if you’re asking me to pick one?
Tonya Harding may have fallen short of gold in Lillehammer, but when it comes to ’90s babes, she gets the gold every time.
