The Feminine Ideal (Reading Response 2)

Every generation has its own standard for the perfect woman – its own set of qualities considered ideal for the time period and its own representation of those qualities.
For the 1950’s, Marilyn Monroe is the shining example of such a representation. The long-standing association between Monroe and all that is womanhood is due in large part to the conscious maintenance of her image, as discussed in the Harris readings. Everything from her choice in roles to her interview persona to studio-produced marketing materials depicting her was intended to plant the seed of sexual desire in her audience.

As Dyer points out, many of Monroe’s characters were on the superficial side – both in terms of their materialist personalities and in their lack of character development. Such two-dimensionalism only helped to solidify Monroe’s persona as a sexual object. Moreover, the directors of her films would often go to great lengths to play up her sexuality, despite how evident it already was – giving her soft lighting, breathy musical numbers and even a bouncy trombone theme to underscore the movement of her hips, as in Some Like It Hot. Monroe made for the perfect object of the male gaze, further compounded by her projected desire for said objectification.

In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Monroe’s character of Lorelai is an unapologetic gold-digger – unabashedly using her sexuality to lure the gaze of rich men for the purpose of obtaining material possessions. But though her actions may be morally questionable, when put into historical context, they take on a completely new meaning for the society of the time period. In an era striving to project a wholesome image, a figure like Marilyn Monroe served to channel the sexuality of a repressed generation while simultaneously upholding the patriarchal system. Her overt sexuality was in direct contrast to the moral superiority assigned to home-making, child-rearing women of the 1950’s, causing her to bear the burden of objectification for all the women of her time. In the meantime, her characterization as superficial or greedy reinforced the notion of the reliant or dependent female, unconsciously reproducing hegemonic patriarchy. These claims are made especially poignant given the intentional nature of the public image built around her. It was against Monroe's portrayal of the immoral nuances of the "feminine ideal" that stars like Grace Kelly could create their own images of dignity and decency.

Following the tragedy of her death, however, her once purely sexual star text took a turn. Posthumous investigations revealed contradictions in her carefully mapped persona, echoing the famous 1949 quote “Live fast. Die young. Leave a good-looking corpse,” and changing future generations’ view of the 1950’s "idealistic" lifestyle. Monroe’s death sparked the sexualization and glamorization of the breakdown, while simultaneously propagating the gaze-centered damsel phenomenon. Her fate, just like the manufactured image she upheld, displayed her as at once an outlet for the secret desires of her audience and a symbol of the patriarchal system she lived in.



1. What effect, if any, did the circumstances surrounding Monroe’s death have on her legacy of sexuality?
2. What keeps modern stars, like Megan Fox, from achieving the same status of universal appeal still held by Monroe?
3. What is the significance of the title Gentlemen Prefer Blondes?