“Monroe was not born but became a blonde; blondeness is a state of ambivalent grace, to which anyone who wants it badly enough may aspire…The blonde’s physical fragility is, of course, only apparent. She must have a robust constitution to survive the arrows life deals her… The mythic role of the Good Bad Girl is, however, directly at variance with the real facts of her life, as all mythic roles are apt to be… The reality of her could never live up to her publicity.”
From an essay by the late British author, Angela Carter, in her 1979 collection, The Sadeian Woman: Exercises in Cultural History.
