A Candle in the Wind

Marilyn Monroe was perhaps the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century, and, you know, just a girl trying to make her way in the world and all that. Born Norma Jean Mortensen in 1926, she developed a witty and articulate manner in her childhood, which accompanied her throughout her life, whether it was during her teenage first marriage, her acting career, or her brushes with controversy. So epigrammatic was she that Marilyn accounts for 27% of all the quotes from the 20th century, just behind Albert Einstein on 28%. No others come close to their quota of quotable quotes, a fact now attributed to a disease that created a chemical imbalance in their brains and substantially enlarged the size of their grey matter.

While the disease that they shared gave them an advantage, it had drawbacks. Einstein had to contend with unruly hair which appeared afflicted by static electricity; it had fatal consequences for Marilyn. Despite being so often perceived as an airhead, she had a brain that swelled so much it pressed against her skull. It gave her excruciating headaches, something akin to having too many cocktails and shots with the girlies. In the end, she tried to alleviate the pain with a drill. Undoubtedly, her last words were utterances made of pure 24 carat gold; unfortunately, nobody heard them but her. The press were kind enough to sugar-coat the truth, and they allowed medics to clear up any sign of the drill and the mess it had made. They had decided wisely that no dignity could be retrieved from the truth, and, more importantly, a beauty like Marilyn wouldn't like to be caught dead with her hair in such a state.

"I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth — and truth rewarded me."

On set, Marilyn sometimes struggled to remember her lines. The flow of remarkable sentences, the perfect Feng Shui of syntax, and the evocative rhythm and word selection all flooded her mind, affecting her memory. She would fluff her lines, often being criticised for being a dumb blonde. But it didn't matter because blondes have more fun (winky face).

Marilyn's status as an actress and sex symbol brought her many lovers. Unhappiness followed her everywhere, and it made matrimony a stormy affair. She tied the knot many times, notably to Joe Di Maggio and Arthur Miller. She sued for divorce in both cases, perhaps struggling to reconcile the contrary demands of a 1950s housewife and an ambitious, independent actress and business women. In any case, as we all know, it's a woman's prerogative to change her mind. When married to Arthur Miller, he occasionally mined some lines from her when he found himself in the limbo of writer's block. From the outside, it looks as though he was exploitative of her physical attractions and mental powerhouse, but she received a lot in return. He made her feel beautiful, freer, more confident, and able to take on the world. No, wait, that was vodka. Vodka made her feel that way. In addition to these relationships, she infamously had an affair with President Kennedy. A well-known fact now, only those close to either person at the time knew what she meant when she declared the timeless words, "Life is too short; buy the shoes, drink the wine, order the dessert, fuck the President."

Fucking the President, however, is as lonely as the job of president itself. Marilyn was no stranger to heartache, and often had to pick herself up off the emotional floor — usually with chocolate, because chocolate is to women what duct tape is to men; it fixes everything. Often, in the frenetic stream of love, she made mistakes. But they were her mistakes to make, or some bollocks along those lines. In her lowest moments, when her films got a tepid reception, when those around her failed to support her, and when man's world could not give her more credit than chauvinism or the sexual gaze would allow, she struggled with depression, undoubtedly contemplating ending it all. But she would pour herself a drink, put her lipstick on and walk out the front door in her most fab dress. "My life's a mess, I must confess. But I'm still pretty in this dress," is what she'd say, more or less, when talking candidly to the press. "Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring," is what she once retorted to the criticism of one woman, who told her to get her shit together. Unbeknownst to most people, that woman was Jackie Kennedy, who then told her to "stop fucking my husband and lose a few pounds, you basic bitch." Days later, Marilyn tried to resolve the matter with a terse but thoughtful letter. She explained to the First Lady that "girls just wanna have fun, you dry cunt." She may have been drinking at the time (hee hee hee). 

"Some girls are just born with glitter in their veins."

Despite all these troubles, she would never compromise her integrity or character. Famously she declared, "I'm selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I'm out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." The most impressive part of this profound and insightful statement was how well she had translated it from Mein Kampf and passed it off as her own. For all her wisdom, her life was really too busy for study and meditation. She needed to lean heavily on her own substantial earnings, attempting to attain privacy and security. Undoubtedly, as with many of the wisest souls that have walked among us mere mortals, she chided the cult of the dollar and looked beyond the emptiness of the many zeros in her bank balance. That and she liked to have her money where she could see it, in her closet (#shoes). 

She died Marilyn Monroe on August 5 1962, in Los Angeles, and her suicide invokes a quote from her some years prior: "They say nothing lasts forever; dreams change, trends come and go, but friendships never go out of style." Unfortunately, in the end, she didn't have any friends, nobody to tell her it was okay to be just Norma Jean, no one to share all the cocktails and shoes and chocolate. Nobody to question if she was really depressed or suffering from low self-esteem and not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.