Marilyn Monroe cursed to be Hot Forever

Marilyn Monroe would have been 100 years old this week.

She was born Norma Jeane Baker on June 1, 1926, and died Marilyn Monroe on Aug. 4, 1962 at 36 of a barbiturate overdose, her incredible star a supernova.

Obviously, there’s a lot being published this week, looking at her filmography, her legacy and, in turn, our voracious appetite for the actor who, despite being a gifted talent, became who everyone thinks of when they hear the term “blond bombshell.”

We just can’t seem to quit Marilyn Monroe, and we really can’t seem to quit talking about her in a specific way. Why am I reading a Variety headline calling her, in 2026, the “goddess of sex”? The accompanying copy practically leers, describing her smile as “a lipstick bomb of bliss” and noting “the sparkly nightclub splendour of those curves.”

Who wrote this, an awooga-ing cartoon wolf?

On the other end of the spectrum, a new documentary on endometriosis called End of the Cycle includes the revelation that Monroe very likely suffered from the debilitating inflammatory disease in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows throughout the pelvic region and other areas of the body.

Monroe’s struggles with infertility and pain are well documented; before an appendectomy, she reportedly begged doctors to spare her ovaries.

And so, her face is everywhere again, to be viewed through a different lens.

I, too, have severe endometriosis, so the algorithm feeds me a lot of content about it, some of it helpful, a lot of it not. But I kept having the same sinking thought this week every time her visage appeared in my social media feeds, whether as the face of endometriosis or as the “goddess of sex” we will never, ever let this woman rest, will we?

Monroe didn’t live to be 100. She didn’t even live to see 40. She has the curse of being Hot Forever: forever blond, forever young, forever synonymous with sex. As such, she remains the subject of ongoing and unrelenting objectification to the point that it doesn’t even feel like she was ever a real person.

Culture made Marilyn Monroe into a poster. A pin-up. An icon. A symbol. An avatar. A costume. A reproduction, copied over and over and over again until it disintegrates. Marilyn Monroe in the white halter dress: an image as American as Coca-Cola, to be consumed in much the same manner.

In the years since her death, there have been plenty of attempts to set the record straight, to try to shed light on the actual woman behind the iconography, the gossip, the myth.

We know she had a traumatic childhood. We know that she was an incredibly talented actor with a true gift for comedic timing, but that people confused Marilyn Monroe, the person, for Marilyn Monroe, the persona.

We know she was a perfectionist, surely, which made her “difficult.” We know she was someone who struggled mightily in her personal life, with addictions and bad husbands, but still had ambitions and dreams.

But even the well-meaning correctives can fall short. Culture critics will hasten to point out she was smart — did you know Marilyn Monroe read Dostoyevsky? — but almost always with a note of barely concealed astonishment. And it always seems to come back to her face and her body, which reinforces the belief that’s all she had to offer the world.

I’m trying to imagine what Marilyn Monroe would be like if she got to be an old woman and I honestly can’t, so static is her image.

Would she have kept acting? Would she have written a bestselling memoir? Would she have become the subject of tabloid ridicule when things inevitably started to wrinkle and sag, her cellulite circled by hacks rating beach bodies? Would she have retreated to a sheep farm in the highlands of Scotland to escape the public eye? Would she have become an advocate for endometriosis or would she have kept that private?

Would she have gone under the knife to preserve her singular face? Or would she have been able to shed an image that we just can’t seem to? Would she be lauded for “aging gracefully” or mocked for trying to hold on to the very thing she was told was most valuable?

We don’t need to forget her. Marilyn Monroe is unforgettable. It’s just a shame that the way she is remembered is so often unforgivable.

winnipegfreepress.com/jenzoratti