I am gazing at a large, framed poster of Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe, smiling sensually in black and white and hanging on the wall of an art store. Next to me, my friend remarks with disdain, “You know, I don’t really respect her.”
Slightly annoyed, I demand, “Why not?”
“She slept with John F. Kennedy,” he said.
“Well,” I reply, “John F. Kennedy slept with Marilyn Monroe. While married.”
“Yeah, but JFK was a great man. He did a lot of good things for this country.”
I turn away with no reply, silently considering all I know of Marilyn, including her contributions to charity and dedication to civil rights. She was hardworking, philanthropic, and intellectual, yet she will always be known as the blonde bombshell, the sex symbol, the hoe who slept with the president.
I now consider that conversation once again, the moment it became clearest to me the unfortunate double standards of respectability faced by women. Marilyn Monroe engaged in an affair with a married man, yet she, not him, is the only one undeserving of respect. She was beautiful and unapologetically sexual, yet we were the ones so fascinated by her image that we demanded it; and even then, her sexuality was what determined her value as a person, nothing else.
A while ago I saw a meme, geared towards young women, circulating social media; it read: “In a world full of Kim Kardashians, be an Audrey Hepburn.” The implication here is that one is respectable, the other is not; Kim Kardashian is often criticized for having “no real talent”, for only being famous because of a sex tape. In short, she used her sexuality to achieve success. This type of criticism can only arise in a world where a woman’s respectability is inextricably tied to her sexuality and how she chooses to use it.
But I find it ironic. We the critics of her sexuality are also its consumers — we watch her show, follow her on Instagram, buy her products; simply talking about her, even just to criticize, feeds into her success. Why are we not to blame? If a woman uses sex to get ahead, aren't we part of the reason that it works?
We extend this mentality to actual sex work — prostitution, stripping, pornography, and other such occupations. Women working in these industries are stigmatized and viewed as either demons or desperate. Almost nothing is said of the demand that is responsible for the existence of these occupations; in particular, for the exploitation of women in these industries. We say nothing of the men who pay for prostitution, frequent the strip clubs, and consume pornography. This market exists for them, yet they, the consumers, remain free of accountability.
Sex, and everything to do with sex, will always be commodified, regardless of the genders of the consumer and the producer. But the commodification of sex nearly always negatively impacts women. So why, then, do women get blamed?
It is high time that we acknowledge the hypocrisy of denouncing a woman for fulfilling a role that we as a society expect — even train — her to fill. The hypocrisy of stigmatizing female sexuality in a society that puts so much effort into commodifying it, placing every type of value upon it except moral.
In the space of these gray areas, we must re-examine how we view highly-sexualized women in the media — pop stars, models, actresses, women from Marilyn Monroe to Kim Kardashian — as well as how we view female sex workers, those millions of strippers, prostitutes, adult film actresses in the U.S... any woman at all who uses her sexuality as a tool of success in a patriarchal and capitalist society that defines a woman’s success in such a way.
Will it ever be possible to redefine success for women?
Is it possible to destroy the commercials, ads, movies, consumer goods, and all other materials complicit in marketing a narrowly- (read: male-) defined female sexuality? More importantly, will doing so have any effect upon the pre-existing demand for these materials?
In short, can we really cure a sickness by eliminating the symptoms, but without tackling the cause?
By being faced with this problem, we are faced with nuance we can hardly hope to address without first asking ourselves these questions. Eliminate the hypocrisy, the gray areas, and the stigma. If we can allow men to be both sexual and respectable, extending the same courtesy to women should not require an astronomical leap of judgment. But really, that's up to us.
