In the decades following her death, Marilyn Monroe has been exalted as the human embodiment of bygone Hollywood glamour and unmatched sex appeal but recently, she has been given another accolade: the counterweight to our culture’s ever-thinner beauty ideal. The oft-invoked argument centers around the declaration that Monroe was a size 8/10/12/14 and if she were alive today, she would be considered overweight and probably, never would have been a star. (These claims are inherently problematic because women’s apparel sizing has varied considerably over the years, rendering numbers utterly useless as indications of proportion and because such conjectures are speculative and sensational in nature.)
Since the early 1990s and the advent of heroin chic, the pressure for female celebrities and models to conform to a waifish ideal has intensified while the average American woman’s weight has continued to increase, thus creating a greater gulf between our beauty ideal and reality. If you have a Facebook account or spend a considerable amount of time on the Internet, you have probably noticed the recent glut of Marilyn Monroe-themed memes. There are a few memes, each a variation on the same idea that Marilyn’s soft, curvy body is preferable to and more attractive than the pilates bodies stalking our red carpets these days. The memes mean well but they are misguided and—I would argue—ultimately just another troubling reminder of how far we have to go before our culture embraces women of all sizes.
In one image, two photos are juxtaposed with the caption, “Fuck society. This is more attractive than this.” The first image (and the one, we are led to believe, that is more attractive) depicts a bathing suit-clad Marilyn preening for the camera. The picture is shot from a slight upward angle and Marilyn stands with her left hip jutted out, which exaggerates the roundness of her hips and thighs. In the other (allegedly less attractive photo), model Eva Herzigova stands in the ocean with her torso pivoted slightly from the direction of her legs and pelvis. Like the Marilyn photo, this image of Eva highlights her slightness by accentuating her hip bones and the tautness of her stomach. The way these images manipulate their subjects is important because it serves to underscore how these discussions are subtly steered to create outrage, frustration, empathy, and to obfuscate the core problem.
The “fuck society” part of the image is a nice sentiment and one I that I support but immediately after that part, the message gets completely off-track. Pitting women against one another, as this meme does, is hardly revelatory and it certainly is not productive. Women are taught from the time they are little that their value is relative: relative to how attractive they are compared to other women, relative to how much men find them attractive, relative to how well or poorly they stack up against the impossible standards society has set for them. And instead of providing women with a means to empower themselves, this line of thinking perpetuates a culture where women regard one another as competition rather than allies without looking at the bigger picture and trying to figure out why this conflict exists. Who profits from it? How are your habits as a consumer exploited by it? What does this accomplish?
Further, there is the added problem of a monolithic beauty ideal in the first place. Is moving the scale a few pounds in one direction really the solution to the fact that we exert pressure on women to look a certain way? Moreover, is Marilyn’s body all that much more realistic or obtainable? She was a preternaturally-proportioned woman whose hourglass body is light years away from the bodies most women inhabit. Sure, she was not stick-thin but she had fat in the right areas (her hips, breasts and backside) and very little in the wrong ones (her arms, lower legs, neck and midsection. For most women, it is no more realistic for them to turn themselves into a Marilyn Monroe or Christina Hendricks (the logical extreme of Marilyn’s body type) than it is for them to try and look like Kate Moss or a 16 year old Russian model. Instead of creating one unrealistic idea of perfection, we should be making society less hostile to women who deviate from the ideal. Some women are naturally very thin; others are curvy; some build muscle with ease; others have wide hips and small breasts (or the other way around), while others are naturally plus-sized. All of those options should be represented and celebrated for their attributes, rather than dissected for their flaws.
It’s okay to be larger, so long as men still want to sleep with you!
The photo above is the second riff on the Marilyn theme. The implicit sexism is mind-numbingly obvious, so I will not spend too much time on it other than to point out that we really, really need to stop teaching girls that their worth is determined by how many men want to fuck them. The other thing to keep in mind, is that Marilyn Monroe was lusted after by millions of men and still found herself clinically depressed, battling substance addiction and without the companionship she desperately desired. Being sexually desired is not the route to happiness and is not inherently valuable.
So, can we please declare a moratorium on the Marilyn Monroe memes already?
