It’s certainly not unusual for a child to find role models or heroes among Hollywood’s starlets and leading men. Celebrity embodies our culture’s idea of what it is to succeed; fame is parallel to the idea of the American Dream, one that idealizes the individual, recognition factor and financial rewards. However, for some of us, we turn to these stars not in hopes of possessing their status, but for a sense of solace, or even some sort of ethereal companionship.
I’m among the latter, finding a soul sister in Marilyn Monroe – a political pariah and voluptuous bottle blonde plagued by poor physical (and subsequent mental) health.
Growing up in Colorado Springs, I attended school with the children and grandchildren of both military legends and evangelical leaders. At every turn and corner, I disagreed with their ideologies, one of the few who did. As isolating and stifling as it felt (and it really, really did), I took considerable pride in sharing the political and often religious beliefs of the very Hollywooders my peers idolized. Even if my classmates and neighbors didn’t get my left-wing bleeding heart back then, it was "Hollywood cool" to hold those values. Marilyn Monroe, the very one that graced the graphic tee shirts of the very people who mocked me, would have agreed.
Marilyn Monroe’s greatest political affiliation may be marked as her affair with John F. Kennedy. However, the “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” crooner was a passionate and vocal advocate of justice and equality for the marginalized and disenfranchised. She became one of Hollywood’s most outspoken critics of racism and the infringement upon the rights of the poor. Monroe even gave her last interview on these topics, “What the world really needs is a real feeling of kinship. Everybody: stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs. We are all brothers.”
In a truly touching story (and recent internet meme), Marilyn Monroe was angered that Hollywood’s Mocambo Club wouldn’t allow a jazz musician, Ella Fitzgerald, a gig on account of her race. “[Monroe] personally called the owner of the Mocambo, and told him she wanted me booked immediately,” Fitzgerald later recalled, “and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night.” The owner agreed, and Marilyn stayed true to her word- appearing every night during Fitzgerald’s run at the club. Fitzgerald stated, “I owe her [Marilyn] a big debt.”
Not everyone was as appreciative of Monroe’s forward-thinking and sense of morality as Fitzgerald. The actress’s “passion… for the poor and the worker,” as described by the daughter of one of her psychiatrists, landed her a FBI file (a file that has mysteriously “gone missing” since her death) for ties with communists. Ironically, being deemed “very positively and concisely leftist” by the government would have been the ultimate honor to a woman who wanted so desperately to be taken seriously as a compassionate and thoughtful person, not just written off as a beauty.
Though, Monroe did boast exceptional good looks.
Measuring in at 5’5.5” with 36Ds, a 24″ waist, and 37″ hips, Monroe was celebrated for having the ultimate hourglass figure. The very same body type that tortured and tormented me as ideas of beauty have dramatically shifted. As far back as first grade, kids in my class talked about my body. I was told that I “ate too much” and “looked pregnant” all throughout elementary school, and the comments worsened as puberty struck in early junior high school. The fat remarks didn’t stop, but were packaged with highly sexualized and vulgar comments about my new large chest. I even remember being groped in the hallway by a boy who was of a clique I had confronted for calling me a “fat whore” only the week prior.
Ultimately, years of harassment left me too broken to know that all of this teasing was, frankly, absolute bullshit. At 16, I had created for myself an extreme diet plan that I felt would prove infallible. I was correct. The pounds dropped off as I ate only 500-1,000 calories every day, and worked off almost as many. And while I now had a smaller (still hourglass) frame, one that would never get me called “fat” again, I was left with an extremely unhealthy relationship with food (something I still struggle with daily). Not to mention, greatly delusional with regard to what my body actually looks like. Even with a deluge of compliments, I still saw oozing, bulging, gargantuan waves of corpulence flooding my sight every time I passed a mirror. I hated myself.
Until I re-watched Some Like It Hot one late night on Turner Classic Movies.
Since then, Some Like It Hot, has become a personal favorite of mine due to my infatuation with portrayals of gay life in early cinema. Marilyn is a sultry club singer named Sugar. Sultry being key, Sugar was the standout girl in her troupe and the object of desire for many of the men who came in contact with her. Her beauty was powerful…
And it was my own!
In one of the most famous scenes in cinematic history, Monroe’s character sings with her ensemble in a sheer dress that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination. In her nakedness I saw myself – ample breasts, a disproportionate waist, hips abounding and legs not for days- but for the single best day of your life. She was beautiful. So maybe I was, too? I dashed to the computer to Google her height and measurements. I was ecstatic to compare my body up against that of someone else; I finally knew what I looked like. The body I had castigated and disdained was almost the same size as America’s most famous and revered sex symbol.
I would soon slim down to Marilyn’s exact 36D-24-37 following a year of a mysterious illness, another time I turned to the Golden Age legend to pull me out of a rut.
In memorializing the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s passing (she died August 5th, 1962), the press will inevitably hype up her death from drug overdose and pay little mind to her reasons as they have for the past five decades. Perhaps understandably, as a star’s most tragic and premature demise only enhances her place in history as Hollywood’s enigmatic legend.
The truth about Marilyn’s life was tragedy through and through, up until her “fitting” end with one of her biggest demons being her struggle with endometriosis.
Endometriosis is a reproductive disorder in which the cells that line the uterus grow in various other places within the body. The little-understood malady is present in approximately five million women in the United States, and can manifest by way of severe pain and several other decidedly unglamorous symptoms.
It was because of her endometriosis that Marilyn Monroe had two miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy; it’s also widely speculated that the condition fueled the actress’s “depression” (she was never formally diagnosed with any form of mental illness, but Monroe was notably sensitive) and landed her on the very drugs that would eventually be the cause of her death at the age of 36.
Monroe’s illness still comes as a surprise to many because the glamorous star never carried herself in a way that implied anything was wrong. Even while she suffered through miscarriages and prescription-warranting constant pain, Monroe maintained the very air of what it is to be a larger-than-life starlet. Her tragedy may write her off as fragile, but her composure and grace in the face of chronic illness takes a kind of strength unbeknownst to those who have not found themselves in the same place as an endometriosis-stricken Marilyn and myself, with my mysterious illness eventually diagnosed by the same name.
On my bad days, when the world feels void of compassion (as it so frequently does this election year), or when I don’t feel very beautiful or physically well, I still look to Marilyn. Though she is the celluloid’s paramount icon, her aptitude to care and, albeit dismissed, fortitude (despite her precarious health) are inimitable. In fact, it seems such traits and their ability to inspire were the very legacy Marilyn wanted to leave behind. More than the blonde hair and airhead roles, Monroe wanted people to feel and to love.
And in her honor today, and each subsequent day thereafter, that is what I strive to do.
My sincerest gratitude goes to the screen legend who continues to inspire, to save me. I love you, Marilyn.
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