A procession of platinum-blonde women in white halter dresses descended on Westminster this morning. For a moment, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d stepped into a 1950s dreamscape. But this was no film set. It was the centenary of Marilyn Monroe’s birth, and her ‘lookalikes’ had come to pay tribute.
The scene was oddly political. A dozen Norma Jeane doppelgängers posed for photographers outside the Houses of Parliament. They waved, they pouted, they did that iconic skirt-billowing thing. But behind the gloss, there’s a sharper narrative. Monroe – the quintessential American star – has been claimed by British cultural historians as something of a transatlantic icon. Why? Because her story resonates with a particularly British obsession: class, aspiration, and the cruelty of fame.
“She’s a tragic figure, isn’t she?” said Dr. Eleanor Croft, a cultural historian at King’s College London, as she watched the lookalikes jostle for position. “The British public has always loved a tragic heroine. Diana, Amy Winehouse, Monroe. They’re all part of a pantheon of beautiful women destroyed by the system. It’s a narrative we know well.”
And that’s where the politics seeps in. Monroe’s life – her struggle to be taken seriously as an actress, her marriages, her links to the Kennedys – has been dissected on these shores with a fervour that sometimes rivals America’s. British tabloids ran exhaustive features this week. The BBC aired a documentary titled ‘Monroe: The British Years.’ (She never lived here, but she did visit twice. Both times, she was mobbed.)
The lookalikes themselves were a study in contradictions. Many were actors, some were drag performers, and a few were just women who’d found a niche in impersonation. “I’ve been doing this for twenty years,” said one, who gave her name only as ‘Diana.’ “The British love her because she’s both glamorous and vulnerable. That’s a very British combination.”
But the event wasn’t just about nostalgia. It was a carefully staged media operation. The organiser, a publicist named Jeremy Finch, admitted as much. “We wanted to reclaim Monroe from the American myth machine,” he said. “She wasn’t just a dumb blonde. She was a businesswoman, a labour rights activist, a woman who fought against the Hollywood studio system. That’s a message that resonates on this side of the Atlantic, where we have our own battles with the culture industry.”
Privately, some historians are more critical. “The British appropriation of Monroe is a bit desperate, isn’t it?” said one, who asked not to be named. “We don’t have our own equivalent. So we latch onto hers. It’s a form of cultural cringe dressed up as transatlantic solidarity.”
And then there’s the polling. A survey released this morning by YouGov found that 67% of Britons could name at least one Monroe film, but only 12% could name a living British actress they considered an icon. That gap tells you something about where we are as a culture.
So, what does Monroe’s centenary really mean for Britain? It’s a mirror. We see our own anxieties about fame, about class, about the price of beauty. The lookalikes will disappear by sundown. But the questions she raised will linger, as they have for 100 years.
Eleanor Rigby, Political Bureau Chief.
