As you may know, Hugh Hefner (founder of Playboy) passed away recently.
Afterward, the story behind how Playboy got started began circulating. I found it to be rather sad, so I am putting it in the spoiler tags but leaving her picture.
TRIGGER WARNINGS: this story mentions things like Marilyn Monroe's nude modeling, her death...but perhaps more impactfully, how she has been taken advantage of by Hugh Hefner. And at least one curse word is in it...I wasn't sure whether or not to edit that out. I did not write this story, so none of those words are mine. I am just sharing them. And since I copied and pasted this story, I am putting it in quote tags to avoid any gold earning from those characters.
I am interested to hear your views about this situation. Do you agree with me that she had been taken advantage of in multiple ways?
SPOILERX
Quote:
This is Marilyn Monroe.
Maybe you've heard of her or seen other pictures?
She was a human being.
She was born the same year as 91-year-old Hugh Hefner who died this week.
She married at 16 years old to escape the foster care system. A few years later, while trying to break into modeling and acting, she posed for some nude calendar photos to earn some food money. She was paid $50 to take her clothes off and smile.
She used a fake name to try and distance herself from the photos.
"I don't know why, except I may have wanted to protect myself. I was nervous, embarrassed, even ashamed of what I had done, and I didn't want my name to appear on the model release."
A few years later she was given her big break and started playing eye candy in motion pictures. Hugh Hefner was building his brand. When he decided to start his "gentleman's magazine," Marilyn Monroe had become a household name. Hefner bought the rights to her earlier shots from the girlie calendar people for $500.
Without asking the actress, Hugh Hefner put her on the cover of his first issue which read "First time in any magazine, FULL COLOR, the famous Marilyn Monroe NUDE."
When asked about it, Monroe had this to say:
"I never even received a thank-you from all those who made millions off a nude Marilyn photograph. I even had to buy a copy of the magazine to see myself in it."
The system did its work on Marilyn Monroe, and she died at age 36 after being digested by the culture that consumed her. She died with money but not a lot. More money has been made by her brand since her death; even today you can see Monroe products being hawked.
Then in 1992 the grave next to Marilyn came up for sale, and Hefner purchased it for himself, gloating in the status that he would be her eternal bedmate.
Dead Marilyn made no comment.
Fifty-five years dead, and now the Playboy is about to pull up the sheets of her tomb and crawl on in.
Hugh and Marilyn never met.
She never consented to anything, from nude photos in Playboy to eternal bedfellows, because he never asked; he never even said hello.
The woman who looked her whole life for love . . . ends up with Hef. The man who spent his whole life ignoring the humanity of women and having his way ends up lauded a civil rights hero.
I don't know that any story defines this asshole more than this one.
Grave next to. Well first off that's not the same as sharing a grave. So it's not in any way affecting her own grave site. I mean... the only one this affects is Heffner, and likely it is something he said to comfort himself in his own coming death. Looking into the details of her plot, her grave would not be disturbed. Additionally, she would not have consented to the placement of anyone else, as it's only being made a big deal because he's rich and everything they do is "exciting".
Second, she used a fake name. She wanted to distance herself from those photos, but sadly that is likely why she was not asked. They wouldn't have her real name to ask her.
The person who wrote this article is heavily biased. Going to the point of assuming a dead body can consent to things.
Well, he may not have known it was her's at first. Or it could be that by using a fake name, everyone involved wanted to continue to keep the photos and the real name separate to respect the model. Who knows. The one who has the answers is nolonger here.
There are a lot of maybes in this, and in the end she chose not to connect herself to those photos.
well I think the issue pointed out by the author is that she chose not to connect herself to those photos, but Hugh Hefner forced the connection to happen...by putting her nude photos on his magazine along with her real name. She did not want her real name to be associated with the photos in the first place.
It reminds me how there was a college student who had a pseudonym as a porn actress to earn money for college. And then her classmate shared her naked videos with everyone at the school.
Ah, he put her real name. Well that is kind of a dick move on his part then.
Doesn't exactly mark him as a monster though. As even the worst of people are still only human.
I think he was kind of maybe sort of obsessed with her lol
well I think because Marilyn Monroe died very young - age 36 - of drug overdose - people look at potential reasons behind why she would have died of suicide. So I think the author is proposing that the playboy situation might have contributed to that
Well there are a lot of things that can contribute to it.
She could have been suffering from all sorts of things which could cause that to become a choice.
And drug overdose? Do they know if it was intentional? Or if it was just to "numb the pain"?
The world is a sad place. Of course, openly flaunting her nudity to the world was terrible. But not enough to bring one to suicide.
So. Upon curiosity I looked up the photo in question. It isn't the only time she has been revealing in her photoshoots, so quite frankly I'd call BS on that specific photo being the cause.
I think what happened was tragic, but in no way is all the blame on Heffner, as it's clear that she continued to do very revealing photoshoots after that. It also appears she has been on the playboy cover since then.
I believe it was multiple photos since she did it for a calendar (usually a different photo for each month or something).
I agree with you that it was probably not the only reason, but it was definitely possible to be one of them. This random man whom she's never met was making a ton of money off her photos, which is disturbing if you think about if you were in that situation...a stranger making a ton of money off your nude photos that you didn't even know he had...
even if you had clothes on, it would still be disturbing that some random person were using you to promote their own magazine without permission
Well the photos were very different, unless of course she changed her hair and outfits.
That's kinda how life goes. It's usually not just one thing that leads to suicide but a collection of events.
Honestly, the best course of action would have been to not have done the photo-shoot in the first place. I don't know the whole legal ordeal, as I do not have access to the legal contract which she signed. It could have stated that he could sell it, and probably did.
Another interesting thing to point out. People weren't demonizing him nearly as bad when he was alive. Quite frankly they are only doing this because he can't defend himself.
People do that. There's been controversy about him for years but from what i have seen, he does treat women respectfully.
Of course if he is going to classify as a gentleman he is expected to.
There are negative reviews of almost every single famous person on the planet.
But stories do not mean they are fact. Just means somebody wrote a story. A lot of people do it for attention, so it's hard to tell what's true and what's false without evidence.
I wouldn't. Had that method of evidence been factual I'd have been suspended from school for nothing. Instead the principle said they had no proof. (I had several attempts from large groups of kids to get me suspended or expelled)
This is why evidence is important. Humans are sheep. If one person does it others tend to join in and do it too. We see this behavior very clearly in fashion. There's no evidence that X is attractive to men. A bunch of women simply told you it is. I'd rather see evidence.
I wouldn't. Had that method of evidence been factual I'd have been suspended from school for nothing. Instead the principle said they had no proof. (I had several attempts from large groups of kids to get me suspended or expelled)
what did they accuse you of
Quote:
This is why evidence is important. Humans are sheep. If one person does it others tend to join in and do it too. We see this behavior very clearly in fashion. There's no evidence that X is attractive to men. A bunch of women simply told you it is. I'd rather see evidence.
What is X??? Who are these women of which you speak? o.O
X is whatever fashion statement they want to mention at any given time. I hear it all the time. Women pretty up to go out on dates. They wear these clothing to attract men. But the ones who notice aren't men usually but women. Because the notion of what is attractive was decided by women for men.
So without feedback with evidence from men the information was misleading.
I've seen this many times where a girl lets their partner dress them. The men rarely ever pick a fashionable outfit. I myself have tried this and I was told it was "not fashionable"
So a persons word is worth nothing if no evidence is there to back it up. In this case there is evidence to the contrary.
They accused me of a variety of things. From hitting someone to skipping a class. Anything they could say.