Marilyn Monroe is often held up as the
antidote to the idea that only thin can be beautiful. “Marilyn was a
size 10/12/14,” goes a common refrain (though sizing basically means
nothing these days, so what does that even prove?). There have been a
couple Marilyn Monroe memes floating around Facebook in the past couple
months, and both are troubling. The focus is on Marilyn’s curves, and
how her swimsuit clad body is different from what movie stars look like
today (oh, the tyranny of the “Best Beach Bodies!” issue). What’s
supposed to be an empowering message to women – you don’t have to be a
Victoria’s Secret model to be beautiful – is completely undermined by
two much older memes: divide and conquer and the male gaze.
In the first photo, Marilyn is compared
to another woman in a bikini, who is much thinner. The text reads: “This
[pointing to Monroe] is more attractive than this [pointing to the
other woman].” While I can totally get behind the title “fuck society,”
and add “and its stupid expectations” for good measure, there’s nothing
anti-establishment about what’s being done here. This
is a common tactic, in which women are pitted against each other, so
that we lose sight of the real problem: namely, society. If women are
fighting amongst ourselves about who is more “beautiful,” if we compare
ourselves to other women endlessly, we don’t have time to notice that
we’re trapped in a hamster-wheel of low self-esteem. Society hopes that
you’ll buy things, to try and make yourself feel better. In the
meantime, it’s hoped that we as women won’t critically examine what
beauty is, what’s being sold to us, and most importantly, who profits
from all this. Fuck Society, sure, because society tells you that if
you’re not extremely thin, you’re worthless. However, extremely thin
women? They’re still people. Further, bodies are just bodies. They have
no intrinsic worth, no moral value, other than what we assign them. The
thought behind this comparison photo is to turn the dominant paradigm on
its head, but what it really does is reinforce that for one woman to be
good, another must be bad. And that kind of thinking isn’t going to get
us anywhere.
The second is the same photo of Marilyn,
this time alone in the Motivational Poster style. The text reads:
“PROOF: That you can be adored by thousands of men, even when your
thighs touch.” From the start this would seem like a better message. No
comparison photo, no pitting women against each other. For some reason,
though, this photo troubles and angers me more than the first one does.
Because here’s the thing: you are worth more than what men think of you.
Marilyn Monroe was, to put it mildly, very sad, very often. She was a
sex symbol, and thus, stopped existing as human being, a regular girl.
Almost everything that fucked up Marilyn’s later life had to do with
being “adored” by men. Men used her, or deified her (and that’s a hard
come-down for those dudes when they found a human being in their bed the
morning after). Political brothers purportedly passed her around like a
toy. Conventional wisdom, political conspiracy aside, has it that
Monroe killed herself. Being “adored by thousands of men” didn’t stop
her demons from consuming her. It angers me to no end that, again, in
the name of self-esteem we’re going to make a poster girl (literally)
out of a woman who was notoriously down on herself.
I want very much for us to stop thinking
that there is only one body type that is acceptable. I would prefer the
focus be on health, rather than appearance. The Monroe Meme seems about
the furthest thing from healthy. This is a woman who abused alcohol and
sleeping pills later in her life, this is a woman who (probably) died
due to depression. But, hey, as long as someone thinks she looks good, I
guess that’s what matters.
Originally posted at Shameless.
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