What would Marilyn Do?

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death. Half a century later her legacy as an iconic bombshell lives on…

Yet even though she was both Hollywood’s starlet and one of its greatest tragedies—her rendition of Happy Birthday, Mr. President ringing hauntingly in the back of our minds—it’s not just those pinup fantasies she created that I found fascinating. It’s her story that I want to understand: she was more intelligent than she was beautiful (Marilyn had an IQ of 168, higher than any of the men surrounding her and, not to mention, a number at genius level). Yet she was rarely recognized for anything beyond her exterior beauty. To be ignored that way, literally overlooked—it’s the worst thing for any young woman to feel.

That was her tragedy.

She’s an inspiration in that she acknowledged and used her beauty with unmatched prowess, all the while always aware of the things lost and gained in this tug of war between commercial femininity and feminism.

These are her best quotes. Here’s to women and femininity. Here’s to love and tragedy. Here’s to Marilyn. 

“A wise girl kisses but doesn’t love, listens but doesn’t believe, and leaves before she is left.”

“I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let people fool themselves. They didn’t bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn’t argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn’t.”

“Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.”

“I don’t mind living in a man’s world, as long as I can be a woman in it.”

“I restore myself when I’m alone.”

“I’m very definitely a woman and I enjoy it. ”

“How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.”

“I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.”

“Love and work are the only two real things in our lives. They belong together, otherwise it is off. Work is in itself a form of love.”

“People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror instead of a person. They didn’t see me, they saw their own lewd thoughts, then they white-masked themselves by calling me the lewd one.”

“A sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing.”

.   .   .

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