What Would Marilyn Monroe Say About Social Media and Personal Image?

You know, I've always understood that image is a kind of currency in this world. But what I'm seeing now with social media troubles me in ways I can articulate, even if I couldn't always articulate my own struggles. The difference is control—or the illusion of it. When I was building my image, at least there were gatekeepers, studio heads who decided what would be released. It was suffocating in its own way, but there was a structure to it. Now, everyone is their own studio head, their own publicist, and that sounds liberating until you realize the pressure never stops. You're performing constantly for an invisible audience that judges in real time. I played a character—Marilyn Monroe was as much a construction as any studio creation. But I always knew where the performance ended and where I, Norma Jeane, began. I'm not sure people have that clarity anymore. They're fragmenting themselves across platforms, trying to be the version of themselves they think others want to see. That's exhausting. That's what nearly broke me, and I had a whole team around me. What worries me is that young women especially are internalizing this pressure to be perpetually camera-ready, perpetually worthy of being watched and liked. The tragedy isn't vanity—it's the loss of privacy, of the right to simply be imperfect and unseen. I wanted to be seen, yes, but I also desperately wanted to be understood as a thinking person, not just an image. Social media seems to make that even harder. You're reduced to a carefully curated collection of your best moments, and everyone believes that's your whole life. The real depth gets lost in the endless scroll. My advice? Remember that the image you're projecting is only a fragment of who you are. Protect the parts of yourself that aren't for public consumption. That's where your actual self lives.