Misogyny unto the mortuary

Shame on you Daily Mail for publishing perhaps the nastiest article of the decade poking fun at Marilyn Monroe’s corpse for its hairy legs, hands that needed a manicure, feet that needed a pedicure, hair that needed dying, chapped lips, and sagging breasts.

On June 9, the UK tabloid published an article, re-printed in Mail Today here, recounting the comments made by the two Los Angeles morticians Allan Abbott and Ron Hast, who looked after Monroe’s body in their new book Pardon my Hearse.

In the long dark night of the soul that every person contemplating suicide must pass through, it’s obvious to anyone with a shred of human empathy that the mental anguish eclipses any concern for the body. The body is of no consequence, naturally, as the person is about to harm it irretrievably.

Yet the morticians who attended to Monroe’s body after her death in 1962 at the age of 36 and whose cruel comments have been reprinted in the Daily Mail, talk as though Monroe should have booked herself in for some spa treatment before taking her lethal overdose. They have done to Monroe’s corpse what has been done to women’s bodies throughout history: dismembered it into her body parts and dissected it to assess how much it conforms to male sexual desire.

When Abbott and Hast, used by the rich and famous, received a call to pick up Monroe’s body, they went to her house and were shocked to find a not very sexy-looking corpse.

From her head to her toes, she was examined closely and found wanting. Here are their reaction

•  ‘She looked like a very average, aging woman who had not been taking good care of herself’.
•  You could tell she had not bleached it (her hair) for some time, because the roots were darker and had grown out about half an inch.
• ‘Her natural hair colour was a light brown, not blonde. Her legs hadn't been shaved for at least a week, and her lips were badly chapped. She was also in need of a manicure and pedicure.'
• ‘Marilyn’s breasts at age thirty-six were beginning to sag’.

Oh dear.  How remiss of Marilyn to die ungroomed.

Actually maybe that’s it. Maybe, having conditioned women to groom themselves from a very early age to make themselves attractive to the opposite sex, maybe they should book an appointment at the beauty parlour before they commit suicide, or before they are rushed to hospital in extremis, or before they shuffle off their mortal coil in whatever manner, so that they look sleek and sexy  for the male pathologists or morticians who will deal with their corpses? To the very end, their bodies must be sexually desirable.

Imagine the remains of a famous man being subjected to such a commentary? It’s unthinkable. It would never happen. His appearance is secondary. It is the man’s personality, his work in the world, his achievements that counts. But a woman’s body is fair game, even in death.

I have no intention of reading this ghastly book so it’s possible that the authors have spoken equally scathingly about the appearance of some of the famous male corpses they attended to but I doubt it. Even if they do, the point is that the Daily Mail chose to pick out and feature the information on Monroe and no one else. After all these decades, with more women in the media, there is still very little sensitivity to writing that is demeaning to women.

Early on in her career, Monroe realised that the men who flocked to her like heat-seeking missiles were in for a letdown when they had sex with her. ‘I'm a failure as a woman,’ she once said. ‘My men expect so much of me, because of the image they've made of me — and that I've made of myself — as a sex symbol. They expect bells to ring and whistles to whistle, but my anatomy is the same as any other woman's and I can't live up to it'.

Yes, her anatomy was the same as any other woman. She was hairy like any woman. Forget her legs, her armpits were probably hairy too though mercifully our malevolent morticians have spared us those details. The fact that in 2015 books and articles are being written about a woman having hair on her legs, as though this is unusual or weird, is just too disturbing to think about.

You might argue that Monroe asked for this kind of scrutiny, having chosen to be a sex symbol. That is a fair point, while she was alive, that is. It is unfortunately the case that many women are happy to treat themselves as sex objects. Criticise them all you wish, just as Monroe was roundly criticised by feminists in her lifetime.

Death, however, is different. To talk of a dead woman’s sagging breasts and hairy legs and unkempt hands and feet reeks of malice - not just for Monroe but for all women.

(AmritDhillon is a freelance journalist in New Delhi).

 

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