Chelsea Swan

When talking about Marlin Monroe Gloria Steinman states that she was an icon with such intensity because she represents the non-threatening childlike sexuality that ‘immature men want’ but also that women fear, to be completely vulnerable and childlike and aggressively sexualised. Women, post her death, saw themselves in her, their situation, her vulnerability, abuse, sexuality. We must look at the why, why we as women react to Monroe in the way we do. Monroe was rewarded for being a more successful female impersonator than many of us, as well as punished for it. She was a survivor, under pressure, but was never able to use her persona to get ahead, and she herself made barely any money. She fought to improve, to learn, to be seen as more, but to play the game of femininity. Steinman argues women are Co-conscious beings with multiple selves, as to play roles is easier than to try to break free, it affords us fewer external punishments, to be multiple personalities. Artificiality and roles is what we are mostly rewarded for and it is hard to let go. We ask ourselves if we will be loved and rewarded and salaried if we let go, as there is little evidence. She also argues that what makes Monroe so riveting for women now is that post the modern women’s movement we wonder if we could not have saved her, by “making a place where she could tell everything” because that is what we have done for each other. She argues many women had mothers who were driven crazy by the world, did not have role models, as they could not be powerful, and so we were motherless, and the women’s movement gave us the space to be each other’s mothers, to repair the early damage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PppR5Fk_FKw