Marcia Brady not so perfect anymore

Say it ain’t so Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.
In a new memoir hitting bookshelves this week, Maureen McCormick, the actress that played Marcia Brady on the seminal 1970s series “The Brady Bunch,” reveals she was nothing like the perfect teen she played on the hit show. In fact, she says, she was a drug addict, once trading sex for drugs, and she dated Barry Williams, better known as her brother Greg Brady on the show, and Michael Jackson.
That’s right, Michael Jackson. The King of Pop. The accused and abdicated child molester. The modern-day Howard Hughes. The anything but normal.
The teen that was the envy of every girl and the lust object of every boy in the ’70s and the superstar that once ruled the music world went out on a few dates and no one, until now, ever knew about it. The paparazzi must have been discoing too hard to notice, or people didn’t care about such trivial matters back then.
But now, these trivial matters make headlines all the time, the byproduct of the age of information in which people want to be fed such unimportant facts on an hourly basis. I’m no exception, with my list of favorite Web sites bookmarked for easy checking whenever I am online. And when I read a headline that says Marcia Brady once traded sex for drugs, I’m quick to click on it.
And then when I learn she once dated Michael Jackson, all former opinions I had about her are smashed quicker than a rotting pumpkin the day after Halloween.
Although I’m a product of the ’80s, I grew up watching “The Brady Bunch.” It was on at 4 p.m. after getting home from school. As far as I knew, it was a modern show starring some kids my age (Bobby, Peter, Cindy and Jan), as well as their older siblings (Greg and Marcia). I thought they wore goofy clothes, but I figured it was a California thing, not the style of the previous generation.
When I became old enough to actually like girls, Marcia became my ideal girlfriend. She was pretty, even with a broken nose, and she was the most popular girl in her class. Unlike Jan, she seemed to handle the pressures of puberty with grace and ease. Plus, she seemed smart.
It was unfathomable to think the actress perfectly playing this perfect girl was anything but perfect. But now she’s telling the world that wasn’t so.
But she’s also telling us more than we really want to know. Now we have to imagine what any children of a Marcia Brady/Michael Jackson union would have looked like. Now those scenes in “The Brady Bunch Movie,” in which the characters of Greg and Marcia become attracted to each, other seem way too real.
At 52, McCormick says she is now clean, although recent career decisions indicate she is still making weird choices. If you’ve seen the numerous reality shows she has starred in, including “Celebrity Fit Club” and “Gone Country,” you know exactly what I mean. On “Gone Country,” she acts crazier than crazy-man Bobby Brown, all while flirting with him, and she attempts to start a career as a country musician.
I haven’t read her book, and I’m not about to. I’ve learned enough reading summaries of it in my constant pursuit of useless information, and now I’m sharing what I learned and my thoughts about it with you. I would prefer to remember her as the undeniably innocent, classy television personality from my youth, and you may too. Too bad. I clicked and you opted to read my ramblings, and now Marcia Brady isn’t as perfect anymore.