I wasn’t going to write about Marilyn, as it felt slightly click-baiting, and I thought the story had perhaps for now run its course (there’s a new Netflix film out in September called Blonde, which will reignite the think piece discourse).
But then Carine Roitfeld released a virtual Marilyn cover for her magazine #CRChina and it made me feel depressed all over again at the rich exploitation of a dead woman’s image; an image that is owned by a branding agency with no connection to her, which bought the rights to her estate piecemeal from another woman who had never met her but happily cashed in on her fortuitousness to inherit the estate by default (Marilyn left 75% of her estate to her acting coach, Lee Strasberg; after his death it passed to his third wife Anna; the rest went to her therapist, who subsequently bequeathed it to the Anna Freud Centre in London, which helps families and children with mental health issues). And in the light of other things which have come to pass this past week in America, thinking about the agency of women felt pertinent.
The situation is considered to be so far from anything Marilyn would have wished, that her case is cited on law practice websites as a cautionary tale in how not to leave your affairs.
Marilyn’s possessions were sold off (including the dress which Kim Kardashian starved herself to not fit into) and her image was and is used to sell products from lighters to nail varnish and jewellery.
It’s a sad legacy for a woman who was so frequently denied control over her life, work and image. She did not consent to the use of a set of nude images of her to launch Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine in 1953, and certainly made no money from the publication (aside from the $50 she earned from photographer Tom Kelley when she posed for them originally). Photography-subject rights are of course something that women are still finding out to their disadvantage as Emily Ratajkowski learnt . Marilyn later had no say that this same man (whom she never met) would then pay to secure the burial spot next to her in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.
Her signature and face turn in rising millions for the agency which owns her every year. “Marilyn” has 1.8 million followers on Instagram, and is currently promoting her designs with Zales jewellers and a J C Penney fashion collection, “styles as fresh now as the day she first wore them.” Except that she didn’t wear them; and judging by the cheap looking peachy sundresses on sale, there’s no way she would have either.
And she has had no say in a virtual fashion shoot, where her live-from-the-afterlife likeness has been superimposed underneath “clothes” from Fendi, Balenciaga, Miu Miu and Balmain. “What Marilyn might wear had she not died miserably at the age of 36, and instead had been able to go shopping in 2022?!'“ is a landmark in vapid fashion conundrums.
The Monroe persona has long been a conduit for Americanism and fame and a way of encapsulating and even fetishising a certain tinted, damaged fragility of womanhood. See Madonna, see Britney Spears, see Kim Kardashian. The real Marilyn, or the perceived real Marilyn, is now little more than marketing collateral. Breathless wonder over a magazine cover shows how far we are prepared to turn a blind eye to the crass exploitation of the memory of a woman who had, and still has, no choice.
Create your profile
Only paid subscribers can comment on this post
Check your email
For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.
Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in.