Kim Kardashian and Marilyn Monroe’s Dress
I’m not exactly a fashion queen. Anyone could tell that by looking at what I actually wear on a regular basis, though I do know that (hopefully) all of you aren’t monitoring what I wear on a regular basis. As much as I’m reading about the importance of dress in an academic context, fashion is not something that takes up a lot of space in my brain. This is also the case for one of the ultimate fashion days: the Met Gala.
I know I’m not exactly quick on the draw for discussions on the Met Gala. It’s been a bit, and there’s an important reason for that. I’m not someone making regular commentary about who wore what at the Met. I see some stuff in passing just because I’m paying attention to pop culture like Blake Lively’s dress, the fact that people didn’t seem to really understand the theme, and — of course — Kim Kardashian’s dress.
For those that missed it, Kim Kardashian decided to wear the dress that Marilyn Monroe wore in her famous “Happy Birthday Mr President” moment. And I don’t mean she wore an homage to the dress, or a replica. She wore the same exact dress. While she did change into a replica after walking the red carpet, she was still donning the very same exact dress Marilyn once wore in 1962.
Seeing how the reaction to what Kim wore that day unfold, I wanted to throw my hat in the ring — appropriately for this blog being too late — in order to look at this fashion moment from a different perspective: that of mythology and storytelling.
So, let’s start with the story of Marilyn. Marilyn Monroe was seen as the epitome of the American Dream — the nationalist myth that in the United States, someone can come from nothing and become solidified and rich. Marilyn was raised in foster homes and orphanages and worked her way to becoming one of the most famous movie stars of all time.
While Marilyn was a very successful actress, she was primarily known as a sex symbol. Her body, hair and voice all become synonymous with sex appeal and the ultimate goal of the male gaze. When her stardom was beginning, it was revealed that she had in her past taken nude photos. The scandalous find did nothing to ruin her position, despite the age it was revealed — it only worked to propel her further into attention.
Marilyn’s persona was one of the dumb blondes. She spoke in a high-speech akin to a baby voice, acted stupid and ditzy in interviews and in photos, and pretended to be so naïve as to be unaware of how the public perceived her and her body. However, it’s been reported that this was very far from the case. Marilyn’s image was something constructed very carefully by herself. By the end of her life, she was the primary one in charge of every choice of her presentation, from what dress she wore to what photos were presented. In a strange twist of irony, it was her remarkable intelligence that led her to be perceived as stupid. She knew it was the naïve silly blonde that would appeal to men, rather than an intelligent and strong woman. In many ways, she was the exact opposite of Grace Kelly, who always presented herself as being intelligent, cunning, thoughtful and classy. Marilyn, on the other hand, was silly, sexy, and stupid. Her control over her image not only shows just how intelligent she was, but also how powerful she was. She was able to actively control the way the public and men perceived her, allowing however much she wanted in and reflecting only what she thought suitable back out. Despite being an object of the male gaze, she took the position of object and flipped it into a position of power, leveraging it to garner money, power and control over her life.
In the famous “Happy Birthday Mr President” moment, Marilyn shook off her fur stole to reveal a skin-tight nude coloured dress embellished with rhinestones. It was probably the sexiest and nudest dress that had been seen in public — especially so incredibly public — up to that point in time. It was meant to leave absolutely nothing to the imagination and convey a sense of being completely and utterly naked. While the moment was one of her most famous, it was also one of her last — she died shortly after the event from an overdose.
Marilyn’s experience with men was fraught and all over the place. She had been married three times and divorced three times, each marriage only lasting a few years at most. There had been long rumours of an alleged affair with John F Kennedy (the president she sang to), a president who had his own issues with sex scandals. Her appearance at the birthday event, the dress she wore at it, and the way she sang all did nothing to quell the rumours — only sparking them into much greater height.
The dress is seen as a remarkable historical piece — one which is the epitome of Marilyn Monroe as an important pop culture icon in the United States. It’s hard to separate the dress from Marilyn, just as much as its hard to separate Marilyn from the other aspects of her personhood.
But then, just a few weeks ago, it was worn again by someone else: Kim Kardashian.
Despite a very different upbringing from Marilyn, Kim actually has a lot of similarities with Marilyn as a pop culture figure. Kim did not grow up in foster homes and orphanages, and she did not come from poor financial beginnings. Kim’s father was a famous defence attorney, most notable for his defence of O.J Simpson (who stood in trial for killing his wife, a friend of the attorney’s wife and Kim’s mother — but that’s a story for a different post). Though, it should be noted that the money she came from is nowhere near the amount she currently has, it is an economical fact that is far easier to become richer when you already have a decent amount of capital to begin with. So, we’ll put her finances as something incredibly different than Marilyn.
But both Marilyn Monroe and Kim Kardashian are pop culture sex symbols. Kim’s body helped to shape the attitudes of what forms of body are considered sexy in contemporary popular culture. Before Kim popularised large asses, very few models would have been seen as having a sizable rear. Now, I tend to have fun scrolling through online retailers and spotting the models who are clearly picked for being Kardashian look-a-likes.
In fact, Marilyn’s nude photos can be compared to what may be argued as the start of Kim’s career: the sex tape. While many think of Kim’s sex tape as the piece that sparked her career, I think I could argue the point in either direction rather than just the one. Kim was already a well-known figure prior to the sex tape’s release (otherwise, who would care about her tape, right?). She was a popular tabloid figure, popping up in pictures with Brittney Spears and very close friend Paris Hilton. Her reality television show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians — which would become a staple of United States Pop Culture — was already ready for production or in the middle of production.
Regardless of the whether or not the sex tape was the cause of Kim’s career, it definitely didn’t harm it. Like Marilyn’s nude photos, Kim’s sex tape helped to solidify Kim as a sex symbol for contemporary popular culture.
And Kim carefully controls her image. While it may not seem that way, a quick comparison of early episodes of Keeping Up with later episodes will show a vastly different Kim. In the beginning, she spoke in a higher pitched voice tinged with a bit of a whine. She acted stupid and pretended to be unaware of her status as sex symbol while feeding into it. In later seasons, her voice is more even, and she refuses to hide her intelligence — actively working toward being a lawyer and demonstrating her control over multiple businesses. Kim has many contacts with paparazzi, and often would schedule them to come and see her in different locations in order to “accidently” promote outfits. There’s an episode of Keeping Up where Kim keeps going in and out of her hotel in different Yeezy outfits to help promote the new line her husband at the time, Kanye West, was producing.
The Marilyn dress is an important piece of a United States myth of Marilyn Monroe, but it’s also a myth in and of itself. The dress is tied intimately to the story of a woman, a controversy, and a commentary on the male gaze in relation to the conception of the “ideal American beauty”. In fact, there’s been a lot connecting Marilyn to conceptions of race and racial superiority, despite her own rejections of the matter. But I think a conversation on Marilyn, race and beauty standards is a post for a different time.
Kim’s story helps to add to the dress from a myth perspective. Dress has always been an important part of storytelling, and even historical outfits are allowed to be worn when it’s in the context of their mythic role. The moment Kim chose to wear this outfit is an incredibly important one. Not the Met Gala, or even the theme of the Met Gala (because it wasn’t on theme), but because of the timing of it all.
Kim Kardashian’s divorce with husband Kanye West has been public and vicious. There has been clear demonstrations of emotional abuse, control and threats on public platforms from Kanye directed at Kim. When they were married, he was always present when she was choosing her outfits, commenting on what she was allowed to wear and how her image should be re-controlled by him rather than herself.
A previous Met Gala with a theme that also didn’t fit Kim’s dress sparked an argument between Kanye and Kim. She was choosing to wear a dress that was supposed to mimic coming out of water. The dress clung to every curve and appeared almost nude at a quick glance. Kanye tried to reject the dress, telling her it was too sexy for a wife and mother to wear. Kim had to point out that she was a sex symbol, crafted that way by the male gaze, herself and even Kanye early in her career. His sudden rejection of this was a difficult argument between the two of them. She did end up wearing the dress.
I could imagine Kanye would have similar problems with the Marilyn dress. By donning that dress, Kim is connecting herself to the sex symbol narrative that Marilyn also crafted for herself, and in many ways is reclaiming the control and power over her own body and image. It was of mythic importance that she wears that dress at that time in that way — to connect herself to the sexual power and intelligence of Marilyn Monroe, and therefore to almost ritually connect those feelings and positions back to herself.
From a protection of historical pieces perspective, I’m not a fan of her wearing it. I like the idea of keeping women’s narratives in museums and in the cultural zeitgeist. But from a mythic perspective, I’m so happy Kim wore this outfit. In many ways, she needed to for herself. But she also needed to in order to reclaim the myth of Kim Kardashian as one that she was telling, and not anyone else.
