“Beneath the makeup and behind the smile I am just a girl who wishes for the world.” – Marilyn Monroe

In 2013, we’re a lot more aware of where diamonds come from, and the dumb blonde act isn’t so cute anymore—but we still can’t resist the charms of Marilyn Monroe. In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, one of her most iconic roles, Marilyn played Lorelei Lee, a woman with a passion for diamonds who saw bagging a rich guy as the only way a woman could succeed in the ’50s. Aside from Marilyn’s breathy sex appeal and comic chops, what we remember most about this film is her glamour: that perfect platinum coif, her flawless red lips and the figure-hugging costumes that are still mimicked all these years later. Here’s how to copy  Marilyn Monroe’s vintage glam look with natural beauty products.

Marilyn Monroe Makeup: Red Lips and Illuminated Skin

Winged eyeliner, perfectly arched brows, scarlet lips and radiant skin came together into one trademark look that defines Hollywood glamour to this day. Marilyn always looked like she was glowing from within, yet there was never a flaw visible: no red spots, no undereye circles, no blemishes. Most of us aren’t starting with a perfect canvas, but we can fake it. Apply a light moisturizer to eliminate any dry spots and ensure an even application of foundation, and then cover any imperfections with a concealer like Josie Maran’s Argan Creamy Concealer Crayon or Jane Iredale’s Circle/Delete concealer, making sure to blend well.

Using a foundation brush (Eco Tools and Tarte offer cruelty-free options), apply a layer of light foundation. Then, use a highlighter stick along the tops of your cheekbones, down the center of your nose, and just below the arch of your eyebrows. Some quality organic options include W3LL People’s Universalist 2 Color Stick and Ilia Beauty’s Illuminator.

Winged eyeliner can be a little tricky if you’re not used to doing it, so follow along with a YouTube tutorial or two to practice. A swipe of red lipstick finishes off the look – check out our red-lip recommendations and tips.

Iconic Blond Curls: Recreating Marilyn’s Hair

Not everyone can achieve or pull off Marilyn’s pale platinum, but you can get the general effect with some rollers and volumizing products. You can try the pin curl method, which is what Marilyn did herself, as illustrated at Va-Voom Vintage Blog, or use the quicker modern method offered by XO Jane. To boost volume at the roots, try Intelligent Nutrients Organic Volumizing Spray, or Aveda’s Volumizing Tonic.

Forget Diamonds: The Finishing Touches

While there are plenty of ethical alternatives to blood diamonds, you don’t need anything that expensive to get Marilyn’s sparkly look. Raid thrift stores, vintage boutiques, Etsy and eBay for pre-loved costume jewelry – the hunt is part of the fun! The same goes for opera-length gloves.

Marilyn’s costumes in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes were so racy for the times, one particular deep-plunging gold dress didn’t make it past the censors. They were all designed to cling to her body in all the right places, showing off her curves. Look for vintage or vintage-style dresses with halter-style tops, nipped waists and flowing skirts that skim the hips.

Related on Ecosalon:

Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday: Get this Hollywood Look with Natural Products

Shackled: The Myth of Marilyn Monroe

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Curvy, voluminous structures of super-human dimensions.

Last week’s the Krulwich Wonders blog on NPR, titled Buildings That Wheeze, Squeeze and Dance, presented a compelling treatise on the fleshing up of architecture. While the ancient Greeks, no doubt, would have loved to have engaged in the Aphrodite-like curvatures of the buildings that follow, B.C.E. technology limited them to ionic contours. In a modern architectural context, that’s akin to an a-cup or b-cup, at best.

Note, an ionic shaft:

Tantalizingly phallic for its time, but PG-13 in comparison to the Marilyn Monroe of skyscrapers.

Robert Krulwich writes that the Absolute Towers in Mississauga, Canada is a “she” building “whose sensuous curves remind me of a beautiful woman, the kind that strides off, unaware she’s being oggled.”

I beg to differ: she knows she’s a head-turner.

The National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, China, meanwhile…

…reminds me of a ticking biological clock.

Krulwhich also includes the Frank Gehry and Vlado Milunić collaboration Dancing House, also called the “Fred and Ginger” building after the dancing duo. He observes, “it looks like a guy giving his girlfriend a squeeze.”

And here’s that same guy, his head done in after a nasty breakup.

Le sigh, La Tete-au-Carre  by French artist and sculptor Sacha Sosno, which also serves as the Central Library in Nice, France.

The crux of Krulwich’s argument is that the line between architect and artist, sculptor and builder, static columns and fluid geometry is as straight and narrow as the ripply side of New York By Gehry, how most of us wished we looked in a Grecian dress.

Krulwich says:

Not too long ago, bodies were sculptors’ territory. The best way to capture those sly contours, the twists and turns of muscle or fabric, was to stay small, make a statue, a museum piece. Buildings were too big. They needed strength, height, the protection of solid geometry — rectangles, squares and triangles. But all that’s changed. With a new palette of supple building materials, builders have become sculptors.

And humanity, the muse.

Images: Choi + Shine Architects/The Land of Giants; jaremfan; NPR

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Pop culture has turned Marilyn Monroe into a two-faced mythological figure, both shallow sex symbol and confidence-boosting bearer of wisdom.

“I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.” This quote is one of dozens that make the rounds on the internet, typically written in script across a photo of Marilyn Monroe, sharing the wisdom of the tragic actress with a new generation. The problem – ironic given the nature of the quote – is that these words did not come from Marilyn. In fact, the many false quotes attributed to her are just a small part of the mythology of Marilyn, a movement that has placed her at the pinnacle of feminine charm and transformed her into something that both aggrandizes her and reduces her to the stereotypes she hated.

“A sex symbol becomes a thing. I hate being a thing.”

Now, those are Marilyn’s words. And like most of the “Marilynisms” that verifiably came from her, they paint a very different picture from the one that is now emblazoned across t-shirts and posters and tattooed on starlets’ bodies. To get the above quote tattooed is virtually a rite of passage for young women in show business and one that has turned Monroe into a sort of secular goddess to whom all sorts of wisdom is attributed. Why do women idolize Marilyn Monroe to this degree? Is it healthy? Does it really honor her?

“People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror instead of a person. They didn’t see me, they saw their own lewd thoughts, then they white-masked themselves by calling me the lewd one.”

It’s not hard to see why so many people continue to find Marilyn so charming, decades after her death. She was utterly captivating. Breathy and beautiful, Marilyn had a keen sense of comedic timing, and her overt sexuality made her both a magnetic and controversial figure. Today, most of us tend to see her as the ultimate representation of female sexiness: someone in control of her own body, someone who was able to gain the adoration of millions with a wiggle and a shake. She appeals to the desire of many women to transform themselves from Norma Jeane next door into a glamorous sex goddess.

In fact, Marilyn has become something of a meme. Pop culture has turned her into not just a sex symbol but a confident and carefree role model, with the help of fake quotes like “We are all stars and we all deserve to twinkle” (subverted, oddly enough, from a passage in one of her letters referencing a freedom ride for minority rights). Photos of her curvy figure are used to pit women of different body types against each other, ostensibly in support of the celebration of fuller figures, despite the fact that Marilyn averaged 117 pounds and had a 22-inch waist. She had the ideal shape of her era, now misinterpreted due to changes in sizing that make a vintage size 10 seem much larger than it really was. Such memes may be well-meaning, but they’re false.

“In Hollywood a girl’s virtue is much less important than her hairdo. You’re judged by how you look, not by what you are.”

Building Marilyn up into a mythological figure ignores the realities of who she was, and the circumstances that made her life so tragic. Marilyn had to change to fit an expectation of female beauty. She adapted to fit an existing ideal, and at this, she played her role perhaps a little too well: she became the ideal. But would Marilyn be happy to know that she is remembered primarily for her beauty and her sexuality? Probably not. Despite wanting nothing more than to succeed as an actress,  she was not only disrespected during her lifetime – treated as an object rather than a thinking and feeling person – but ridiculed.

“Some people have been unkind. If I say I want to grow as an actress, they look at my figure. If I say I want to develop, to learn my craft, they laugh. Somehow they don’t expect me to be serious about my work.”

Marilyn couldn’t seem to escape the restrictive boundaries that her physical appearance and her sense of alluring yet shallow feminine mystique placed on her life. When she proposed an adaptation of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, envisioning herself in a role that was actually quite fitting for her persona, a reporter asked her, “Do you know how to spell Dostoevsky, Marilyn?”

A foster child with a family history of severe depression, Marilyn bounced from one unloving home to another before marrying at sixteen to escape the cycle. Her two subsequent marriages, to Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, were a hallmark of what it was to be a woman in the socially restrictive 1950s: marrying what they wanted to be. In Marilyn’s case, that was first an American hero, and then someone serious, who commanded the respect of intelligent people. But the myth that had already begun to swirl around her then made her larger than life, even to her husbands. Marilyn oozed sex, but childhood abuse left her scarred to the degree that she didn’t experience an orgasm until she was well into her thirties.

“I am a failure as a woman. My men expect so much of me because of the image they have made of me and that I have made of myself, as a sex symbol. Men expect so much and I can’t live up to it. They expect bells to ring and whistles to whistle, but my anatomy’s the same as any other woman’s. I can’t live up to it.”

None of this is to say that Marilyn Monroe is unworthy of being adored, nor that she should be viewed only as a cautionary tale – an example of the toll that objectification can take on a woman’s psyche. But perhaps part of what draws us, as a culture, to the legend of Marilyn is the fact that she represents an essential struggle within many women to this day. She has become, as Gloria Steinem put it, an exaggeration of femininity that struggles to fit into the expectations of an ideal, but conceals the truth of who she really is inside – “a kind of larger projection of the individual woman for a lot of us.”

Marilyn’s early death at age thirty-six – whether an intentional overdose or accident – has preserved her at the height of her beauty and sexual allure. She didn’t live long enough to push through all of those restrictions and participate in the feminist movement, as many believe she likely would have. She never got that serious starring role that would finally have given her the validation she craved as a thespian. She didn’t reach an age that would have allowed her to beat back many of the misconceptions that many have developed about her and her life. And so she has been commercialized for mass consumption, plasticized into a mannequin that can be manipulated to say anything we want.

In our mythical interpretation of her, we have washed away some of Marilyn’s humanity. Remembering Marilyn Monroe as a three-dimensional person rather than a flattened image of an hourglass figure and a pretty face – or even worse, a complete subversion of her reality – is a far more fitting tribute to the most iconic woman of the 20th century, and to ourselves.

Images: 1, 2, 3, 4; shameless mag

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Break them.

“If I’d observed all the rules, I’d never have got anywhere.”
-Marilyn Monroe

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Image: Amy Loves Yah

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From Jil Sander’s S/S 2012 campaign, the pencil skirt is an elegant classic that flatters all would-be femmes fatales.

Named for its shape, long and slim like a pencil, the skirt emerged from World War II Europe. Cut in a straight line from the hip to the hem, the narrow fitting skirt was designed to save precious fabric rations.

Despite its frugal beginnings, nothing says hardworking glamor like the 1940s pencil skirt. Perhaps it’s because for the first time in history, women were expected to go out and work while the men were  fighting.

Dior’s version of the tight fitting skirt with a small waist that emerged during World War II rationing when fabrics became too expensive.

Throughout the decade, the skirt was widely worn by everyone from female French resistance fighters to Hollywood’s Joan Crawford. Alfred Hitchcock’s version of the film noir heroine exemplified by Grace Kelly, Kim Novak and Tippi Hendron, saw the pencil skirt’s continued popularity throughout the 1950s. In his taut psychological thrillers, Hitchcock projected his vision of an idealized woman – always tailored and blonde, and giving off some major heat beneath an icy veneer.

Marilyn Monroe reminds us why the pencil skirt’s waistline fits at the true waist and not lower – giving even lesser mortals an hourglass shape.

Which brings us back to the essential appeal of the subtly sexy pencil skirt. The body-hugging skirt that both reveals and conceals, its genius lies in its ability to suggest propriety and the possibility of passion all at once.

Keeping the flame of past pencil skirts alive, the streamlined style has been adopted by designers Victoria Beckham, L’Wren Scott and Roland Mouret, as their silhouette of choice. Modern style icons such as Carine Roitfeld, Angelina Jolie and Michelle Obama are frequently photographed looking elegant and chic in a pencil skirt, teaming their longer hemlines with bare legs and a pair of heels.

Christina Hendricks as Mad Men’s Joan Holloway has single-handedly brought back the hips, shown off to great effect in her character’s pencil skirts and fitted tops.

Now & Then: The Cocktail Dress

Now & Then: The Trench Coat

Now & Then: The Bold Brow

Now & Then: The History of the Cuff

Now & Then: The History of Turtlenecks

Now & Then: The History of Tights

Now & Then: The History of Skinny Jeans

Now & Then: The History of the Chevron Stripe

Now & Then: The History of Penny Loafers

Now & Then: The History of Go-Go Boots

Now & Then: The History of the Poet Blouse

Now & Then: The History of Ladylike Gloves

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What if these three icons of 20th Century sexuality could weigh in on the modern woman?

As I walk into the Biltmore, I shiver. Sure, it could have been the air conditioning, but when is a Los Angeles venue ever set below an ever-so-temperate 68 degrees? I take a deep breath, flexing my toes in my heels. After all, I’m about to interview three icons of beauty from the 20th Century – women who not only gave birth to the modern sex symbol but continued to influence her beyond the grave. Were they proud of the modern beauty? Or did they see her as a monster of conflicting parts, with her duck lips, puffy cheeks, and jutting collarbones?

And then, I see them before I see them. You know how you can feel electricity in the air before a storm? Even the cloud of cigarette smoke that hangs over their heads is curling beautifully. Sitting together at the center of the Gallery Bar are Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and Josephine Baker. Blonde and raven heads bob together, laughing, as the women lean into the waiter lighting their cigarettes. Yes, you are still allowed to smoke in fantasy pieces if the participants request it. As for me, I just shift my notepad from one hand to the other.

Flash forward a few moments, and I’m seated among the legends at a round table. Josephine Baker was a sensation in Paris in the 1920s. Marilyn Monroe holds the patent for sexy womanhood in the 1950s. And Elizabeth Taylor helps define strong womanhood in the decades since. I want to know what they think about beauty, Botox, and maintaining a size 2 in a world gone mad with weight issues.

I rattle the ice in my glass and lean forward. “You are all among the biggest icons of feminine sexuality for the 20th century. Would you call yourselves beautiful?”

The women stop smoking for a moment, cigarettes hanging in surprise. Then they burst out laughing, a musical swing of husky voices blending together like music. Josephine exhales over her cigarette, eyeing me up and down. “This one cuts right to it,” Elizabeth says before lighting up another smoke.

“Beautiful? It’s all a question of luck,” Josephine Baker says, snapping her fingers for a drink refill. “I was born with good legs. As for the rest…beautiful, no. Amusing, yes.”

Elizabeth Taylor turns her eyes on Josephine. “This coming from a woman who performed wearing nothing more than bananas at the Folies Bergère in Paris. It was 1927, darling, own your courage! The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues.”

“And how!” Josephine returns, clicking glasses with Elizabeth. But Marilyn Monroe wears a worried look. “I don’t think it’s that simple,” she shares. “A sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing.”

But Josephine is not having it. “Don’t be such a funny old bird, love. You’re the bees knees, every drugstore cowboy on both sides of the Atlantic wanted to get their wiggle on with you,” she offers, waving her hands over Marilyn’s blonde mop. “Maybe that’s true. But what good did that really do me? Dogs never bit me, just humans,” Marilyn sighs.

Elizabeth and Josephine exchange glances. Yes, she’s always like this. “You’re gorgeous, darling. You’re better than this tragic little girl bit. Own how powerful you were. Don’t let the specter of your failed relationships define your whole life. I sure didn’t.” Elizabeth pats Marilyn’s hand. Then she takes off a giant diamond ring and places it on Marilyn’s. “Big girls need big diamonds, right?”

I use the opportunity to interject. “Miss Baker, how do you think the perceptions of beauty have changed over the decades?”

Josephine turns her honey-brown eyes on me, her hand touching her close-cropped hair. “It’s like this, chickadee. I was too skinny and dark for America, so I hit Paris in the 20s. By 1927 I was one of most photographed woman in the world.”

“Maybe it’s because you were always topless in a short skirt,” Elizabeth smirks. “I wasn’t really naked, I simply didn’t have any clothes on,” Josephine returns. “But I felt good about myself all the same. I used sexuality as a political statement, as a way to empower myself and others.”

Elizabeth raises her glass. “Touche, mon ami!” says Elizabeth, as the women click glasses. “To tell you the truth, darling, I so wish I could have had your body confidence in my own life,” Elizabeth sighs. “I remembering going on and on to The New York Times in 1986 about being a size 6. Growing up, I hated the way I looked, the sound of my voice. I was into my 50s before I finally figured out that happiness wasn’t about being thin, but clicking your head into the right place. Without that inner click it doesn’t matter how many fad diets you go on.”

Marilyn chews on her finger. “You were called the most beautiful woman in the world, and you hated the way you looked? Good gracious, no wonder the rest of us had such a hard time.” Then she flashes her legendary smile. “But I see your point. Sex is part of nature, and I go along with nature. I never thought the body was meant to be all covered up. But it’s really all make believe, isn’t it? The idea of what’s beautiful. It’s all just silly moments in fashion.”

“That’s true, doll,” Josephine sighs. The women look pensive, pausing a moment to attend to their cigarettes and scotch. “If natural is sexy, what do you think of the 21st century woman, with her arsenal of Botox and fillers?” I ask.

“What’s this Botox?” Josephine asks. Elizabeth grins. “Oh, it’s this darling little beauty aid I used later in life. A little bit here and there, and the wrinkles just melt away.”

“I don’t understand, it’s poison? That you put in your skin?” Marilyn shakes her head.

“All I know is that I sweat real sweat. I shake real shakes. It’s not that complicated,” Elizabeth counters. “Yes, beauty comes from within, but I always maintained that if someone’s dumb enough to offer me a million dollars to make a picture, I’m certainly not dumb enough to turn it down. I wanted to stay pretty. Who are you to judge me?”

Josephine shrugs it off, laughing. “Beauty is entirely subjective, and we need not poison ourselves for it. It didn’t matter how beautiful the French found me – when I returned to America in 1936, they called me a negro wench and sent me packing. I fought that racist standard the rest of my life and was honored for it.” She fiddles with her drink. “See, this is why I loved the French. Even when they insult you, they do it nicely.”

“Miss Monroe, is there anything you’d like to add?” The actress tucks her blonde hair behind her ear. “Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring,” she shares. “That, my dear, is what it means to be beautiful.”

“Well said!” Elizabeth holds up her glass. “To beauty!”

As Josephine and Marilyn hold up their glasses for the toast, I realize my time with the legends is over. Maybe it was because a crowd has gathered around the women, straining for glimpses. Or maybe it’s because I realize that there really are no clear answers. Is beauty defined by nature? Society? Or is it all about how you age? Maybe, in the end, beauty can be measured by the mark you leave on the world.

*Answers guided by quotes from Elizabeth Taylor, Josephine Baker, and Marilyn Monroe.

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A weekly round-up of EcoSalon’s top stories.

Take five. Here’s an at-a-glance chance to reconnect with or catch top stories you might have missed this week at EcoSalon:

Are you getting tired of hearing the same old runway stories during fashion week? Writer Abigail Doan writes about new trends gaining momentum during the recent Fall 2011 in her piece, Moving Beyond The Runway At Fashion Weeks Globally. Sustainable fashion shows are re-thinking runway for “Editors, retailers, and fashion lovers who want to fully inspect and comprehend new concepts in the pipeline.”

Sweet Jane? As the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes co-star to Marilyn Monroe, actress Jane Russell was the epitome of alpha female for many, empowering women and making a mantra for our writer, Libby Lowe, when Russell said: “Nobody chaperones the chaperone. That’s why I’m so right for this job.” A self-proclaimed “Teetotal, mean-spirited, right-wing, narrow-minded, conservative Christian bigot,” later in life, Russell was also against a woman’s right to choose. Lowe looks at our relationships with celebrity figures.

Noise is one of the biggest pollutants we have to deal with and it doesn’t matter where you are. Shelter editor Leigha Oaks offers a fun new way to combat it at home, enabling us to block out the upstairs neighbor’s stilettos and little Jack’s incessant tuba practice by putting A Hex On All Your Noises. Made from hexagon shaped wood wool, the pieces add geometric glamor to your home.

Bills are serious. Heart attacks are serious. But food? In Foodie Underground: Why So Serious? columnist Anna Brones asks us to save some humor for the table and realize food should be enjoyed, not dissected.

In The Goldberg Variations: Recycling For Baby Boomers, columnist Susan Goldberg pokes fun of the small numbers on recycling and why “The Boomers” who invented ecology and even Earth Day didn’t think ahead to when the generation would be older and blinder. Goldberg says: “It’s bad enough that people my age can’t wear skinny jeans or two-piece bathing suits anymore – at least let us recycle our Activia containers.”

Image: Dricker94

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