Come on Down: Generational Babe, Dian Parkinson

In which we showcase the best reason to stay home from school sick in the ‘80s.

Gen Xers like myself were practically raised on television, and the daytime game show The Price is Right was a constant for us back then. A longtime fixtures of the show, model Dian Parkinson served as one of host Bob Barker’s “Beauties” from 1975–1993. Now, Barker’s Beauties were all stunning, but for my big money Dian Parkinson was the scorching hottest of the bunch. A statuesque blonde bombshell, Parkinson’s sensual, come hither eyes and 36D-23-37 figure were positively hypnotic. Watching the former Miss World USA 1965 model the game show’s prizes while wearing string bikinis and high heels was basically daytime TV’s equivalent to softcore porn for Gen X kids. All of the show’s beauties seemed to know this and lean into the sexiness, but Dian especially kicked the sex appeal up to dangerously combustible levels. She was a total smokeshow and my number one reason for wanting to stay home from school sick back then.

It wasn’t all wine and roses for Dian on The Price is Right, though. In 1994 she revealed that, for several years, she would visit Barker’s dressing room between episode tapings. There, she would drop to her knees and provide good old Bob with a little, um, oral relief. Game show hosting is arduous work, and Barker needed some (going) down time, ahem. The “come on down” jokes practically write themselves here. Dirty humor aside, Parkinson alleged that Barker eventually used what began as a consensual sexual relationship to extort her—if she stopped stepping up his microphone, she’d be fired from the show. She described it to a friend as being his “sexual toy.” In 1993 Parkinson abruptly quit before filing a sexual harassment lawsuit against Barker the following year. The suit was withdrawn a year later, with Parkinson citing legal costs and health issues. She has largely disappeared from the public eye ever since.

The Price is Right was such an integral part of my childhood, so it was shocking to learn about these behind the scenes shenanigans. At first, it was a bit titillating to imagine Dian diligently helping her boss to, um, relieve some tension. Dian was an Amazonian goddess, after all, and all of us little boys felt strange stirrings whenever she appeared in a tiny bikini to reveal the latest Showcase item. Then, a little later as teenagers, we constructed elaborate fantasies of Dian doing the exact thing she was doing to Bob in his dressing room. Yet, if her story is true, it certainly casts an ugly shadow over that titillation.

Barker adamantly denied everything at first, then claimed it was Dian who came on to him and wouldn’t leave him alone. It’s pretty clear from other stories about Barker that he was probably a swine, so it’s hard for me to take his word on much. Dian isn’t the only one of Barker’s Beauties to bring a lawsuit against him, either. Still, this might be a classic “he said, she said” and we’ll probably never find out the exact truth, especially with Bob dead and Dian off the radar.

Beyond the Barker story, Dian Parkinson was a big damn deal to many of us. She was a statuesque beauty who posed seductively for us every weekday morning, like clockwork, and whose body was so spectacular it was almost impossible to believe she wasn’t conjured up out of thin air by our collective fantasies. In terms of regular television presences in our lives, few were as reliably hot as Dian Parkinson. I can’t remember where I saw it, but I once saw Dian referred to as a “generational babe” and that feels entirely accurate. Dian Parkinson brought an awful lot of joy and, uh, relief to many of us back in the day.

Parkinson posed for Playboy twice and, interestingly, both times at the tail end of her tenure on The Price is Right, in 1991 at age 47 and two years later at 49. To say her pictorials blew away much younger women’s would be a serious understatement. Parkinson was most definitely at peak hotness as she neared 50. She’s a work of art in these (NSFW) shots taken from the Playboy spreads.

Here’s to hoping Dian Parkinson found some of her own relief from the stress of the Barker scandal, and that she’s enjoyed the quiet life since stepping out of the spotlight.