The pop cultural icon for female heterosexuality spent her childhood in eleven foster homes and one orphanage. Eleven foster homes. One orphanage. By her own account, she was a survivor of multiple episodes of child sexual abuse. Her mother? Mentally ill and committed to an asylum. Shortly after Marilyn’s fifteenth birthday, her legal guardian Grace McKee brokered a so-called marriage for her. In other words, Marilyn Monroe was legally prostituted as a teenager. Before she was twenty-five, she had already made three attempts at suicide; by thirty-six, she was dead. Marilyn called her first husband “Daddy,” she called second husband (Joe Dimaggio) “Pa,” and she called third husband (Arthur Miller) “Pops.” Apparently it wasn’t just her heart that belonged to daddy.
Apparently behaviors that are seen as natural and even desirable for women, are read as degrading and absurd for men. The mystique of femininity or the bald facts of dominance? The sexual behavior for women that patriarchy wants to idealize is identical to that of an enslaved child.
At a recent auction of her personal belongings, a pair of Marilyn’s rhinestone-encrusted, stiletto-heel pumps was sold for $48,000. A high price to pay for shoes, but cheap compared to the cost of walking in them.