Heavy is the head that wears the “It” girl tiara.

Sure, it’s all fun and games – or coke and threesomes – at first. But it seems that barely a day goes by without some misguided pop moppet lurching across the evening news: Onetime star, fulltime trainwreck Britney Spears continues to careen from one explosion to another; Lindsay Lohan’s strung out, white-trash-on-meth mug shot remains a perpetual punch line; and Nicole Richie keeps forgetting to eat.

Sure, you could blame the spoils of fame, the permissive atmosphere of the cult of fame, or the poor decisions of the It girls. But I think it’s much handier to blame the It Girl title itself. Whether the girl possesses some actual talent or simply a birthright that makes her notable doesn’t exactly matter, all that matters is that she have some sort of indefinable quality that makes her fascinating to watch.

History has no dearth of young women who, once thrust into the limelight, manage to screw things up in astounding, stupefying ways. From extremely public and scandalous affairs to drug addiction to homelessness, It girls through the ages have been there, done that, and few have lived to tell the tale.

The Original ‘It’ Girl

The “It girl” title was born with silent film star Clara Bow. Bow, whose diminutive size and glamour of barely concealed sexual voracity made her one of the first film sex symbols, was discovered while still in her teens, growing up in Coney Island. Bow’s breakout role was in a film unsurprisingly called It – not, of course, the one about the scary clown, but a 1926 silent film based loosely on a provocative novelette by contemporary tastemaker, Elinor Glyn. Just to clinch the title for their very bankable new star, Bow’s studio paid Glyn $50,000 to declare publicly that Clara Bow had It.

Bow’s fame grew exponentially after It and later Bow vehicles tended not to vary from the prescribed formula: Insert Bow into some plot about poor girl trying to make her way in the world and let her take off as much clothing as censors would allow.

As Bow became the first real sex symbol of silent film, tales of her supposed sexual appetite outside of her films blossomed. The fledgling celebrity media followed with strict attention Bow’s real extracurricular activities, which included public affairs with leading men, engagement after engagement, as well as her rumored activities. Those included having a threesome with two Mexican whores, bedding the entire starting line up of the 1927 USC Trojans football team, and knowing both her Great Dane and pet koala bear on extremely intimate terms.

In Hollywood, she was treated as a kind of pariah – a dirty joke telling, hard-drinking outsider with a thick Brooklyn accent – but to the public following her exploits in the papers, she was fascinating.

In truth, Bow’s personal life was a straight up mess and her eventual pattern of self-destruction seemed to set a precedent for the It girls who followed. She had been sexually abused as a teenager by the father who later lived off and squandered her earnings in Hollywood; when she was a young girl, her schizophrenic and sometime prostitute mother had tried to slit her throat; later, Bow found herself feeling betrayed by friends and family alike, from the best friend who married her father to avoid deportation to the cousin who lived with her and regularly stole money from her. Under intense strain, Bow suffered a severe nervous breakdown in 1931, causing her studio, Paramount, to fire her. After some time off, she made a brief comeback before marrying, making babies, and gaining nearly 100 pounds. Bow’s enforced retirement only got worse: A suicide attempt, severe depression and hypochondria, addiction to sleeping pills, electro-shock therapy, and finally, a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

“A sex symbol is a heavy load to carry when one is tired, hurt and bewildered,” Bow wrote once, near the end of her life. She died a recluse in 1965, 32 years after her last film appearance.

The Blonde Bombshell, not so lucky in love

Platinum blonde Jean Harlow succeeded Clara Bow as the silver screen’s sexual It (and id) Girl.

Born in 1911, Harlow escaped her weird and controlling Mother Jean by getting hitched at age 16 and moving to Beverly Hills, only to find that Mother Jean’s own lifelong ambition to become an actress had followed her. Her mother pressured her into finding work as an extra in films and soon after, Harlow starred in the curiously named Why is a Plumber? Not long after, Harlow was discovered by producers and consummate weirdo, Howard Hughes, who cast her in his film, Hell’s Angels. The role catapulted Harlow into the sex symbol stratosphere.

As befitting a sex symbol, especially one barely 19 years old, Harlow stumbled through a well-publicized series of husbands, affairs and strange tragedies. Her second husband (there were three in total), producer and director Paul Bern, was found naked and dead in the bath at their Hollywood home. A coroner’s inquiry determined that he had shot himself in the head. At first, Harlow was widely suspected of being responsible for or at least connected to his death, but, in the hopes of sidestepping what would surely be a scandal, MGM, Harlow’s studio, spread the totally unscandalous story that he had killed himself because he was impotent.

In 1937 and at only 26 years old, Harlow died from renal failure after the onset of severe kidney disease. She was buried in the negligee she’d worn in the last film she made, Saratoga.

Interestingly, Nicole Richie recently gave birth to a little girl she named Harlow, after the troubled sex symbol.

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