Fragile Beauty

Too much has been said about the woman and the myth so I'm not going to cover old ground. I like self-reinvention. She did it and so did all the big "survivor" female stars, Maddona, Cher. After achieving commercial success she went back to taking classes,
wanting to become a Method actress. After Joe DiMaggio, Arthur Miller and possibly, probably JFK. The reasons to love this woman are endless and the way we perceive her can shift from one image to the next, vulnerable, strong,playful, always feminine, always beautiful.

So why after decades of alternative poster blondes do we keep going back to prints of this woman, to defining female sexuality through her, to disseminating her brand of womanliness through popular culture? Its the mystique I think. Today's stars risk over-exposure, they are garish, they are perhaps too obvious, they do not have that softly softly Marilyn thing where even lolling around naked you assign some innocence to her.

Besides the tragic untimely death that lends the ultimate cache to any star, I think the cult owes a lot to the photographers who captured a side of her that the movies did not always communicate, and to her ability to project that fragile beauty that we so want to own and protect.


"Cat Among the Pigeons"