Marilyn Monroe: a house-hold name, a fashionista, an award-winning actress, a sex icon and so much more. She is a multi-faceted actress that is often misunderstood as surface level or is just seen for her looks. This misunderstanding typically comes from men and women who fail to see the way she utilized her body and talent to get viewers to feel a certain way and to climb up the ladder of success. Monroe showed women that they could use their bodies to play into the male gaze and get whatever they want. Some may see this as degrading, but I see it as a way of working against societal norms and using what you’ve got to get to the top. She was all about taking control of your situation and being confident in who you are. She also kept her public life and on-screen life similar, leading her to be successful on all fronts. Thomas Harris explains in “The Building of Popular Images” that establishing Monroe’s image as the ideal “playmate” was the image that got her most of her pictures, so she carried this image both on and off screen. While the male gaze did define much of her success, that does not mean that she conformed to it. She gave the viewers what they wanted, but also showed women that they can be beautiful, smart and talented.
The male gaze is all about ideals, so she played into the ideal of being the perfect “Playmate” and into the ideal of being a non-threatening “dumb blonde.” Her act as a “dumb blonde” was one of the smartest acting methods that she perfected. She may have seemed dumb, but she was actually the complete opposite. It took extreme intelligence, talent and strategy to create a consistent character trait that was so believable and that ended up making her one of the most successful actresses of all time. Not only did she take over the dumb blonde act, but she also became a glamour icon. Being this icon, she took on objectification of her body, while also representing how women can live a happy and luxurious life. Łuksza Agata explains in the article, “The girl, nature, goddess, or how Marilyn Monroe became ‘the queen of glamour’?” that “hyper-feminine visual code that marks the female body as an object of desire, an object of consumption and the bearer of social aspirations, and changes it into a spectacle and a commodity that becomes a visible sign of the longing for a better life.”
Aside from being a glamor icon generally, she was also a sex icon in both senses of representing sexuality and normalizing sexuality, especially for women. Richard Dyer explains in “Monroe and Sexuality” that “Monroe became virtually a household word for sex.” Utilizing this association with her Playboy history and pin-up style, she manipulated the male gaze to garner success and popularity—giving her a platform to empower women through ways only women would understand. Monroe said it best herself: “If I’d observed all the rules, I’d never have got anywhere.”
Outside Source Used:
Łuksza, Agata. “The Girl, Nature, Goddess, or How Marilyn Monroe Became ‘the Queen of Glamour’?” European Journal of American Culture 37.1 (2018): 57-73. Web.