Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

by Anita Loos

I had become obsessed with Marilyn, not only as a sublime comedienne but also as an icon of social, political, and sexual subversion. I watched her films incessantly, revelling in what I perceived to be their subliminal insurgent message. In most of her roles, but especially as Lorelei Lee, Marilyn seemed to have ascertained that the world was one big bastion of hypocrisy, especially when it came to women, so she put a new spin on an old adage: if you can’t beat ’em, make ’em pay, pay, pay. She conformed exquisitely to patriarchal expectations of her, honed her seductive powers and female wiles, cultivated her beauty and charm, prettified her razor-sharp wit, and, while never compromising her Leibnizian belief that beneath all the crap and rot humanity could shovel up this was, after all, the best of all possible worlds, she hung everybody out to dry.