As her life drew to a close, 1970s sex symbol Farrah Fawcett proved that she boasted both grit and glamour. She had fought for, then surrendered her treasured privacy to document her nearly three-year struggle against anal cancer so as to inspire others.

In Farrah's Story, which aired on NBC in May to nearly nine million viewers , she talked about how she shaved her golden locks before chemotherapy could claim them and experimental treatments in Germany.

Fawcett, 62, died last Thursday in a hospital in Santa Monica with longtime beau Ryan O'Neal by her side.

THE HAIR

With her toothy smile, tousled hair and unfettered sensuality, Fawcett was the all-American It girl.

Voted one of the 10 most beautiful people on campus at the University of Texas at Austin, she became a sensation in 1976 as Jill Munroe, one of the crime-fighting trio in the TV series Charlie's Angels.

Although she lasted only one season, she was arguably the most famous of the three, particularly for her hairstyle which was dubbed the 'Farrah Flip'. Every woman wanted her bouncy, flick-back, layered tresses.

'It was an easy, carefree haircut, windblown, but also very sexy,' Hollywood hairstylist Jose Eber, who gave her the trademark coif, told Barbara Walters on 20/20 last Thursday.

'Everybody wanted it.'

With scores of women dying to copy the style, she made hairdressers in the United States 'a tonne of money', said Richard Calcasola, owner of Maximus salons in Long Island.

'It caused a dramatic change in the industry,' he told Newsday.com.

'We gave up rollers. In one day we pulled out 25 of those old-fashioned hair dryers and replaced them with blow dryers and curling irons.'

THE BODY

Shown at the height of what some critics derisively referred to as TV's 'jiggle show' era, Charlie's Angels, which also starred Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith, gave the actresses ample opportunity to show off their figures as they disguised themselves as hookers and strippers to solve crimes.

Fawcett, then married to The Six Million Dollar Man star Lee Majors, was the face that launched 1,000 ships.

She sold T-shirts, shampoo (Wella Balsam), wigs and even a novelty plumbing device called Farrah's faucet.

While women wanted her hair, men wanted her - or at least a pin-up of her.

One of Fawcett's most remembered images - that of her in a clingy, red swimsuit - sold between six and 12 million copies worldwide, going by different estimates.

In fact, the 1976 poster, Fox News said on its website last Thursday, was 'the engine' that drove two Ohio brothers from college dropouts to multi-millionaires running poster empire Pro Arts Inc.

To think it was not even one of her favourites.

Fox News added: 'Early in the summer of 1976, the brothers received a package containing 25 shots of Fawcett in a red swimsuit.

'She had marked her favourite with a star. It featured gleaming white teeth, windblown hair and... her nipple.'

After Angels, Fawcett left TV to focus on more meaty stage and movie roles, equally adept at playing abused women as tough gals. In 1995, at 50, she stirred controversy by posing partly nude for Playboy magazine.

But that has long been forgiven.

As fellow Angel Jackson, who paid tribute last week, said: 'Today when you think of Farrah, remember her smiling because that is exactly how she wanted to be remembered, smiling.'

This article was first published in Urban, The Straits Times.