Move Marilyn Monroe
A petition to free Marilyn Monroe from post-mortem sexual abuse
I want to make a spiritual request.
Can we free Marilyn Monroe in the #MeToo era? Can this finally be her time?
I want people to know this about Marilyn so they can finally understand her, see her, and stop comparing a bunch of silent right-wing blonde women to her as has happened time and time again. I want us to stop relating them to her, using her image, and exploiting her.
Norma Jean Mortensen, who would later rename herself Marilyn Monroe, was not some random sex symbol. She was not stagnant image of an old school idea of femininity and gender norms. She was a beautiful and complex woman with so much to know and love.
Marilyn suffered deep emotional wounds as a young girl. Her mother suffered from severe mental health issues that made her unable to take care of her. She was placed into foster care at a young age and suffered sexual abuse in multiple different foster homes. That trauma would carry through the rest of her life and would be amplified by countless men who exploited her.
Marilyn Monroe launched the legacy of Playboy’s namesake, Hugh Hefner, and received no more than $50 and very little information. Marilyn was the cover and the centerfold of the very first issue of Playboy, a picture which was taken when Marilyn Monroe was an up and coming actress with no money. She posed nude for the photo under a fake name for $50. When she became famous, Hefner bought the rights to the photos of Marilyn for $500 from a calendar company. That magazine became a bestseller, launching Playboy as a media empire. Monroe never got any more money for the usage of the pictures. She even had to buy the magazine herself to see the picture. He would not be the first to exploit Marilyn, not the last.
She struggled extensively with many different mental health manifestations from her early childhood trauma. She had multiple failed marriages, which often collapsed due to her anxious-disorganised attachment style. She had chronically low self-esteem and found herself difficult to love.
Marilyn was a highly intelligent woman with a big heart for those being exploited. She was actively invested in and participating in politics that did not align with the “dumb blonde” persona people placed on her. She was actively and openly in support of the Civil Rights movement. In fact, Ella Fitzgerald attributes her success to Marilyn because when she found out that a prominent LA club was not letting Fitzgerald play, she promised to come and sit front row at all of her performances - and she did. She was a founding member of the Hollywood branch of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. She was elected as an alternate delegate to the state’s Democratic caucus.
On the set of 1950’s All About Eve, she was given a warning after being found by studio executives reading radical leftist books. She was openly pro-Castro. But she was not called to speak at McCarthyism and anti-Communist investigations like many other people in her circle at the time, which many people have suggested was probably because she was perceived as a dumb blonde.
As much as she is associated with sugar daddies and glamour and red lipstick, at home she preferred blue jeans and flat shoes. She was kind of a soft-spoken person, actually.
The part that I find the worst, as someone who dealt with abuse, is that she is still dealing with it today post-death.
Hugh Hefner paid $75,000 dollars to be laid next to Marilyn Monroe because “spending eternity next to Marilyn is too sweet to pass up.” What a disgusting clown of a man who no woman would ever want to be laid next to for all of eternity. This is the same man now being extensively accused of drugging and coercing women at the Playboy mansion. His legacy of sexual exploitation continues through his position at Marilyn’s side, finding woman to inflict pain upon even after his spirit has passed.
The other man buried above Marilyn? A much lesser known creep named Richard F. Poncher.
Poncher’s widow Elsie is quoted in the story confirming a long-standing and creepy rumour: that he insisted on being interred face down over top of Monroe.
“He said, ‘If I croak, if you don’t put me upside down over Marilyn, I’ll haunt you the rest of your life,’” Elsie Poncher told the Daily News.
Marilyn could not consent to that. It speaks to the passive way abusers will continue to forcibly haunt you, degrade you, and attempt to exert power over you. Sexual violence is not about sex. It is about power. Marilyn is dealing with sexual violence that followed her into death. She still has men trying to exert power over her to this day.
To top it all off, Marilyn Monroe converted to Judaism in her adult life and was incredibly dedicated to her Judaism. While she requested a proper Jewish burial, she was denied this request post death and buried by a Lutheran minister.
Jewish funerals are supposed to happen quickly, within the day if possible. That wish was not granted. It reportedly took 6 hours to even get her body from her home to the mortician, a trip that was meant to take 45 minutes. She died on the 5th of August and was buried on the 8th of August, three days later. Her body was subject to body shaming from the funeral service, Abbott and Hast. Allan Abbott, her mortician, stated when he saw the body of Marilyn that she ‘looked like a very average, aging woman who had not been taking very good care of herself’. He tore apart her manicure, her hair colour and the fact that she had not shaved her legs in ‘at least a week’. Marilyn’s makeup artist Whitey Snyder came to the funeral service to fix her body up in her typical manner. Snyder began to discuss her breasts, reporting that she typically used falsies. When they first saw her after the autopsy, one of the workers saw her recently incised chest, which had changed shape. They exclaimed ‘what happened to her boobs?’ They stuffed her bra with cotton wool in the coffin, stood back and stated, ‘Now that looks like Marilyn Monroe!’ The mortician later auctioned off the ‘falsie’ breasts brought to the funeral home by her executrix, and some of her hair that was removed by the embalmer. Her dead body was picked apart to be sold, probably to another of these creepy men.
Her body was captured for a photograph after a Life magazine photographer bribed a mortuary attendant with a bottle of whiskey to take a photo of her un-embalmed, freshly autopsied body. Her dead body was subject to even more derogatory comments from a male gaze. There have also been many allegations around these photos. One such allegation is that the Hollywood Museum of death stored and displayed some of the post autopsy images of her, obviously without her consent. There have even been claims of necrophilia.
I’m incredibly bothered by the lack of understanding of who Marilyn was and the reduction of her as a face and body. Marilyn dealt with that from childhood to the great beyond. None of these celebrities stealing her image and borrowing from her legacy live up to the core of who she was and what she stood for even a little bit. Marilyn is a whole special and beautiful creature of her own who cannot be replicated by fake curves and a dress.
Marilyn was not silent and exploitative and appropriative. She was open and loving and dealt with a lot of mess she did not deserve. She stood for something. She is so much more than just her body. Let’s stop reducing her to curves, distorting her image, ruining her things. As women, let’s stop perpetuating the abuse she navigating through our gross caricatures of the womanhood we think she represents. She has been through enough already.
What Marilyn deserves is to have her body moved away from her abusers who followed her into death. By Jewish law, if a corpse is in a circumstance that is considered undignified, it may be moved. Being buried in a non-Jewish burial ground against one’s wishes is one of those reasons, and I cannot begin to imagine a more undignified circumstance than being placed next to Hugh Hefner without your consent. This reflects a Jewish value, kevod hamet, or honor of the dead. This rule typically would prevent moving of a corpse, but if they are being dishonoured by some other circumstance, then it is actually obligatory. To rebury Marilyn Monroe, by Jewish law, would require involvement of a chevra kadisha, which is a Jewish burial society, proper handling of all remains, including soil around the body, reburial done as quickly as possible, and Rabbinic guidance.
I believe this is worth the effort. Every time a woman goes to see her plot, they are forced to be reminded of the inescapability of sexual abuse and that their body is never safe. They are forced to bear witness to a symbol of how women in our society are treated, a commodified object even as a corpse, whose wishes are ignored to accommodate masculine wishes. What a horrible message to send women. There is nothing beautiful about her burial site. It is a distorted and ugly representation of everything that ruined Marilyn’s life and stopped her from receiving the love she deserved. A dead body should never a marketable item.
Marilyn deserves to be moved with a proper Jewish burial, as is her right and was her request. It should not be a loud event. Not something garish and camp and packed with celebrity hoping to use her for clout, cosplaying as her, making a mockery of her legacy. She deserves something quiet and respectful as she was. She deserves people to know who she was and for people to stop exploiting her eternally. For all women. She has had the longest, most eternal sexual abuse story I have ever seen and is still being sexually abused to this day. Let her spirit rest.