Where Are They Now: Girls in ’80s Music Videos Edition
Via the AV Club, here’s Marc Tyler Nobleman’s super rad “The Girl in the Video” project, in which he tracks down and interviews the women who silently vamped and smoldered in all those old music videos, and whose ’80s hair and intense cosmetic contour only grows more powerful in retrospective. The first installment of his project included Audie Lenkov, the girl from “Summer of 69” (she was 16 at the time; it was her first audition ever) and Kelley Parker, the (actual) girl from “Smooth Criminal” (she was 10); this year’s round starts off with Karen Morton, otherwise known as 867–5309, and her interview takes a surprising personal turn.
What have you been doing since “Jenny”?
I worked for Cosmopolitan. I can’t find the magazine. The pictures were very, very pretty. I did another ad for Cosmo in a negligee.
After that I got a job at a bank and got fired the first day. I don’t remember why! Then I went to Long Beach State and learned makeup.
Since 2006, I’ve had this rare disease. I was allergic to a sulfur medication and came down with something called Stevens-Johnson syndrome. It’s named for two doctors in the twenties who recognized this. It sometimes goes undiagnosed. You burn from the inside out.
I’d hiked that morning with my dog. The first thing I noticed was that my face had a bit of a rash. I went to the emergency room. I’ve had eye infections from makeup so thought it was that again. But I was unlucky.
I was the first patient of this doctor’s residency. I sued the doctor because I was misdiagnosed. I lost because they didn’t want to ruin a young doctor’s life. I was like “What about my life?”