Springboard to Stardom

Thirty years ago today, the Los Angeles Times published an article about the UCLA Bearwear clothing catalog and this year’s crop of student models. I was fortunate enough to be amongst them.

If thirty years ago seems like ancient history, you’re wrong! As far as I was concerned, in 1983 I was already living in the future. The real 1984 was just around the corner, no longer an arbitrary date picked by Orwell for his novel about a dystopian future. (Or, maybe not so arbitrary, as it was written in 1948.) Los Angeles was abuzz with preparations for next summer’s Olympics and things were already being moved into place for UCLA to host half the world’s athletes in a campus-based Olympic Village. (I ended up working there – but that’s a story for another time.)

Ronald Reagan was in the White House, MTV was playing music videos 24/7, Sally Ride went to space, and I was debating whether to invest in the cool new “luggable” Commodore 64 computer or continue begging time on the Graduate Student Union’s multi-terminal Wang 2200 LVP wordprocessor. (I held off -purchasing a Macintosh Plus in early ‘86.) So, you see, it was modern times!

On the other hand, this sounds like a long time ago: 1983 was also the year that the first cellular phone call was placed and the year that the Internet was born (with the migration to TCP/IP from the US Defense Department’s ARPANET.) But I was unaware of these things at the time, and if I were, their significance would have escaped me. (Meanwhile, have you heard of Deep learning and Generative AI?)

The important thing about all of this is, of course, that per the LA Times, I was the “cover boy” following in the footsteps of “cover girl” Heather Locklear who had appeared on the 1979 UCLA Bearwear catalog cover. Within just a few years Heather, my fellow UCLA and Bearwear alum, had built an impressive career with roles on Dynasty and T.J. Hooker. If you want to know more, read the article!

PS – I never put my heart into pursuing a modeling career. Truth is, that like Heather Locklear, if you catch the bug, you really do need to “quit school and become a waiter and go to charm school to make it happen” — quoting something I read in the LA Times. I quickly lost track of my fellow catalog models, but the Internet (thanks 1983!) tells me that Juan Pablo Villablanca, the back cover model mentioned just after the front cover model in the article above, pursued his plans of going to medical school and is now Chief of Diagnostic Neuroradiology at UCLA. Good going Juan Pablo. You see, that’s where an animated face and a good smile can get you!

Slideshow of most of the 1984 catalog, above. They still publish a paper version of the catalog but nowadays you can buy Bearwear online here: https://www.uclastore.com/ (Once again, thanks to the birth of the Internet in 1983. Sorry, I do not believe they will honor the 1984 prices!)