Marilyn Monroe

48 years ago, the death of Marilyn Monroe was revealed to the world. This frail yet incredibly strong being’s disappearance saddened the whole planet.

Her heavenly body hid a scared little girl traumatized by abandonment, and scared to never be loved enough. It was also hiding a sensitive woman with a luminescent spirit, one that, somehow, is still shedding light onto our lives.

48 years ago can seem forever for one who follows carefully the news everyday. For one who has seen the world change its face many times over since then. How things have changed since this sad day of 1962 ! Women’s rights, civil rights, the media… everything. With the 48 years of perspective we now have on Marilyn and the whole context in which she lived, it seems obvious, even at times extremely astonishing, to see how much ahead of her times she actually was.

Maybe this is the key to her everlasting influence on all of us. Maybe this is what makes her eternal : many of us can relate to her, understand her. She was trying to express truths that were not tolerated back then. Trying to express a pain and suffering no one cared about at a time when all that was expected from a sex symbol was for her to be one, period.

Who cared about the scared little girl behind this electric figure? Those huge blue eyes that could express agony or hapinness in such a powerful way ? Who cared about what she could think and feel ?

“Shut up and be beautiful Marilyn. Just be sexy…”

God only knows how much more she could have brought to the world if they had let her speak ? For Marilyn was one hell of a woman : determined, intelligent, bright, sweet, sensitive and loving. Had she lived longer, we can only hope she would have finally discovered the warmth and respect she truly deserved.

Abridged from an article by Melanie Claisse, August 2003