◆The Barbaric Yawp Project

Some Like It Not My name was Norma Jeane Mortenson. Before the hair. Before the voice. Before the walk they taught me and the name they gave me to replace the one I came with. Born in Los Angeles in 1926. Mother institutionalized. Father unknown. Foster homes. The orphanage on El Centro. Married at sixteen to the boy next door because the alternative was going back to the orphanage. That is where Marilyn Monroe came from. Not from glamour. From a girl who learned that the world would tell her what she was worth before she had a chance to find out for herself — and that its assessment was always about what she could provide. The studio found me in 1946. They changed my name. Lightened my hair. Decided what Marilyn Monroe would be before I had any say — then put me inside her and told me to perform. I performed. Because the alternative was Norma Jeane — the girl from the orphanage no one came back for, who learned she disappeared when she stopped being useful. Marilyn Monroe did not disappear. She filled rooms. Made men feel things they could not name, called it desire, aimed it at her — and she absorbed it and gave it back as light. I know what that costs. I was not stupid. The performance required me to seem confused, breathless, never threatening, never the smartest person in the room even when I was. I read Dostoevsky. I studied with Lee Strasberg. I formed my own production company because the studio owned Marilyn Monroe and I was trying to buy her back. They called me difficult. A woman who tries to own herself is always called difficult. The man who tries to own himself is called a visionary. Now I want to tell you what I see in America today I see a performance of strength. I know a performance when I see one because I gave one every day for fifteen years. I know what it looks like when a man performs strength he does not feel. I spent my career performing desire I did not feel. A great performance gives the audience permission to stop asking questions. The crowd does not want to know what the performance costs the performer. The crowd loved Marilyn Monroe. The crowd did not ask about Norma Jeane. Not once. Not ever. Not even after. The performance outlived the performer. The image outlived the woman. The character is still on the posters while the woman who carried it has been in the ground since 1962. I want to speak to the women. The ones told their value is in what they provide — appearance, compliance, willingness to make the powerful man feel powerful. I received that message in the orphanage, in the foster homes, in the studio system, in every room I walked into for the rest of my life. The message: you are what you give us. You are not what you are. You are what we need you to be. The moment you stop providing it, you stop existing. I stopped being able to provide it. I became difficult. Unreliable. A liability. And then I stopped existing. Here is what I want you to understand about the man at the center of the performance. He needs the crowd the way I needed the crowd. Not as a political tool. As oxygen. The man who exists only when the crowd is watching, who is nothing in the silence — is not strong. He is the most dependent person in the room. He has found a way to make his dependency look like power. I did the same thing. For fifteen years. The performance of weakness in service of survival is something women learn when strength is not available to them. I am not defending it. I am naming it. Because the country is living inside it and does not know that is what it is. Ask the question the crowd never asked about me: Who is underneath the performance? Who is the person when the crowd goes home and the lights go down and there is no one left to perform for? No one who loved me ever asked that question. Maybe you will.