The Genius of Marilyn Monroe: A Personal Awakening to a Historical Injustice

Before we begin, I'd like to invite you to do a small exercise. Take a moment and reflect on what comes to mind when you think of the name Marilyn Monroe.

Some of you may know her life story in detail. Others, like me until recently, might only have a few broad strokes. This isn't a quiz. It's about taking stock of the impressions you've inherited from the culture around you. What do you see? A white dress over a subway grate? A breathy birthday song for a president? A tragic symbol? A dumb blonde?

Hold onto those impressions. Now, let me tell you a story.

An Unexpected Revelation on a Summer Afternoon

It all started last summer. A friend was over, and we decided to watch a movie. My initial choice, a Peter Bogdanovich film set in my old home of Singapore, was too dark for the mood. My friend, scrolling through my collection, suggested Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot. I was game. I'm a huge Wilder fan, but somehow I had never seen his most famous film.

A few minutes in, there's a scene on a train. An actor comes on screen, and the performance cut right through me. There was something so subtle, electric, and layered in what she was doing that it stirred something deep and wordless inside me.

"Who is that actor?" I asked my friend.

She looked at me as if I were insane. "Robert," she said. "That's Marilyn."

I was stunned. Not just because I have poor facial recognition (a story for another day), but because this was the first time I had ever truly seen her act. And the performance was a revelation.

The Emotional Collision: Genius vs. Myth

What I was witnessing was not the charisma of a movie star; it was the work of a master craftsman. Marilyn Monroe has a screen presence that is almost superhuman. In every single second she was on screen, she communicated multiple, often contradictory, things at once. One thing with the dialogue, another with her tone, a third with her face, and a fourth with her body.

As someone who studies acting as a hobby, I know enough to recognize when someone is doing something nearly impossible. Marilyn Monroe is, without question, one of the greatest actors I have ever seen. Full stop.

But as I watched, mesmerized, a deep and overwhelming emotion began to well up inside me. I had to ask my friend to pause the movie so I could process it. It took me a few minutes to put a name to the feeling, but when I did, it was unmistakable.

It was a burning, outrageous anger.

I felt like I had been personally robbed. Robbed of the chance to discover this brilliant artist when I was younger, when she could have been a formative role model for me. But more than that, I felt a profound sense of injustice for her.

How could we, as a culture, have erased this brilliance from her legacy? How had we reduced this complex, incandescently talented person into a caricature? A silhouette, a scandal, a punchline?

Erasing a Legacy: A Study in Misogyny

The answer, it seems to me, is clear: a vicious and particular kind of misogyny. One that is reserved for women who are talented, and compounded for women who are also beautiful. Women who shine too brightly for the world to handle.

Marilyn Monroe was both. Had she been less of either, I believe she would have been treated with more respect. And had she been a man, she would be spoken of in the same breath as Marlon Brando. The fact that she isn't is not an accident. It is a historical injustice.

Even the well-meaning tributes, like Elton John's "Candle in the Wind," often do her a disservice. They mourn her, but they also infantilize her, framing her as a fragile thing blown off course by fame. What's missing from almost every popular narrative is a recognition of her power and, above all, her genius. And if her life is a tragedy, that is the greatest tragedy of all.

The Work of Reappraisal (And a Call for International Women's Day)

My friend, a professional actor herself, was the one who was inspired to act as a child after watching Marilyn Monroe. She lent me Monroe's unfinished memoirs. In them, I heard her voice for the first time — simple, direct, almost childlike in its language, but profound and piercing in its insight. The genius I had seen on screen was there on the page as well.

This journey of discovery has made me wonder: how many other women's contributions have been buried under the weight of beauty standards, cultural dismissal, or misogyny? Spoiler alert: it's a lot.

So I am making this post for a reason. With International Women's Day on March 8th, I want to invite you to do something more than post a pithy quote on social media. Use this as a chance to go deeper. Start looking. Be curious. Seek out the stories of women — in history, in art, in science — whose contributions have been overlooked.

Or, even more radically, look into your own life. Your own family lineage. Is there a woman there who deserves a reappraisal from you? Greatness doesn't always get the recognition it deserves in its time. Sometimes, it's up to us to do the work of seeing it anew.