Few celebrities have captured the public’s attention like Marilyn Monroe. Mention of her immediately evokes images of platinum blonde curls, beauty marks, and that white dress, flapping in the updraft of a New York City subway grate. But despite being almost universally known, no one knows the real Marilyn Monroe because she never existed. She was less of a person and more of a product, created, invented for public consumption and packaged with a pretty bow, unforgettable, while the real person, Norma Jeane, went completely unseen. Join me this week to discover the real Marilyn from her traumatic childhood, to her tragic failed marriages, her experiments with psychoanalysis, stint in a psych ward, and mysterious entanglement with the Kennedys leading up to her untimely death at the age of just 36.

Sources: 

• Smithsonian Magazine "Who Was the Real Marilyn Monroe?"
• Vanity Fair "Marilyn and Her Monsters"
• Tatler "The real story of Marilyn Monroe: who was the woman behind the mask?"
• The Indian Express "Before Blonde, revisiting Marilyn Monroe's tragic life and mysterious death"
• Women Film Pioneers Project "Cutting Women"
• National Library of Medicine "The history of barbiturates a century after their clinical introduction"
• Vice "Take Some Pills For Your Hysteria, Lady"
• People Magazine "All About Marilyn Monroe's Alleged Affair With JFK and Brother Bobby"

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