A hundred years after her birth, the myth of Marilyn Monroe is being resurrected not by Hollywood, but by a legion of lookalikes. Sources confirm that this weekend, hundreds of peroxide-blonde women in white halter dresses will descend on Los Angeles. They will gather at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where Monroe’s ashes are interred, to celebrate her centenary. The event is sponsored by a cosmetics corporation and a luxury watchmaker. Monied interests, as always, find a way to monetise the dead.
The organisers call it a tribute to her cultural legacy. I call it a spectacle for the age of late capitalism. Monroe was a star created by the studio system, a woman whose image was sold to the highest bidder. Now her likeness is being sold again, this time by women who have turned her into a uniform. The lookalikes will pose for selfies, sell prints, and hawk merchandise. The corporate sponsors will collect data from the crowds. It is a perfectly packaged celebration of a woman who died penniless and exploited.
Documents uncovered by this desk show that the Monroe estate has aggressively licensed her image for everything from vodka to yoga mats. The estate’s revenue has quadrupled in the last decade. The centenary is a marketing opportunity, not a remembrance. But the women in the white dresses do not see it that way. They speak of Monroe as a feminist icon, a victim of the patriarchy reclaimed. They ignore that her most famous photographs were taken by men who sexually harassed her. They ignore that her life was a cautionary tale about the cost of fame.
One lookalike, a woman named Patricia, told me: ‘Marilyn represents freedom. She was unapologetically herself.’ I asked her what she thought of the corporate sponsors. She shrugged. ‘It’s a chance to celebrate her. The money doesn’t matter.’ But the money always matters. The estate has trademarked the phrase ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President.’ They charge a fee for any public screening of the song. The centenary event will include a singalong, of course. Every person in the crowd will be a walking advertisement.
The cultural legacy Monroe left behind is a template: a beautiful woman destroyed by the machinery she built. The lookalikes are the spare parts. They gather every year, their numbers growing. Some are actresses hoping for a break. Others are housewives escaping their lives. All of them are chasing a ghost that was never real. Marilyn Monroe was a character. The woman who played her, Norma Jeane, was erased long ago.
As I walk through the cemetery, I see the women posing by her crypt. They smile for the cameras. The sun glints off their platinum hair. It is a perfect, manufactured image. The same image that has made millions for men in suits. The same image that killed her. And they call it a tribute.
This is not a celebration. It is a funeral for the idea of authenticity. Happy birthday, Marilyn. The cheque is in the post.
