Christina Aguillera and Marilyn Monroe

[Peggy Wilkins]

First, a note regarding some recent discussions; then on to more
interesting things.

I have been following the Playmate-vs-celebrity discussions and while
I find them interesting on a personal level, I feel that this
discussion has reached such a degree of fine detail that we are making
little further progress toward advancing to this project's final goal.
I think we largely understand the points being made (and certainly the
success of the GND concept in PLAYBOY is being demonstrated in spades
here, judging from the impassioned arguments about it!); but this
topic is getting deeply into subtleties that are distracting us from
other discussion that should be taking place.  (Oh, my poor neglected
discussion topic timetable!)  Perhaps we could continue this further
at another time, but unless there are some really new ideas/concepts
to introduce here, I hope we can move on.

And having said that, I do have another celebrity-in-PLAYBOY-related
comment -- and this one I think has a new angle.

Some of us will recall that a couple months back there was a report on
the PML saying that someone had heard from a very reliable source -- a
source who had never been wrong about such things in the past -- that
Christina Aguillera had agreed to pose for PLAYBOY, and was scheduled
to appear in the 50th Anniversary issue.  The rumor may also have
involved CA being on the cover.

On hearing this, I expressed a wait-and-see attitude.  Basically, I
felt some trepidation that a CA 50th Anniversary cover could really be
a good one, and there's absolutely no precedent for putting any
celebrity on a Big Anniversary Cover, so who knows what would come out
of this.  I then laid these thoughts aside, until today when I
happened on a profile of CA while changing television channels.

First let me say that I am not very familiar with CA -- I know she is
very big in some music circles, and she has been on many magazine
covers, some of which have been controversial.  I also have seen her
pictures in Maxim.  I have liked some pictures of her, and I have
disliked others.  That is about the extent of my exposure to her.  So
what I say here is based on this little knowledge plus the 15 or so
minutes I saw tonight.

Consider for a moment that Marilyn Monroe helped launch PLAYBOY by
appearing on the cover of the first issue, and also nude in her Golden
Dreams calendar pose inside the magazine.  Marilyn at this time was a
figure of some controversy.  She presented her sexuality to the public
in a very open way, and many people reacted negatively to this.  To
give one of the more famous examples, at the Photoplay Awards in early
1953, Marilyn sauntered into the room, late, in a skin-tight gown and
brought the room to a standstill.  Men gave out whistles and catcalls.
The next day, Joan Crawford was quoted as saying that it was a
humiliating display, and that Marilyn believed too much of her own
publicity -- the public wants to believe that under it all, actresses
are ladies.  This was far from the only time such comments were made.
I remember seeing a newsreel showing a woman watching a huge billboard
of Marilyn in her skirt blowing scene go up; and she commented that
she thought it was vulgar, and she didn't see what Marilyn had that a
million other American women didn't also have, but didn't show.

Marilyn's nude calendar story had broken less than a year before the
first issue of PLAYBOY appeared, and she worked what could have been a
career disaster to her advantage by refusing to be ashamed of it.  She
publicly went on record saying that she posed nude because she needed
the money -- it was a straightforward matter of survival.  When asked
if she really had nothing on in the photos, she quipped that she had
in fact had something on -- the radio.  Her humor and refusal to be
embarrassed by what could have been a scandal won over many, and her
career not only survived but flourished.  Her matter-of-fact
presentation of her sexuality, and her obvious and public acceptance
that it was a natural part of life, was quite revolutionary for the
time.

Another of her quotes from around this time: "Sex is a part of nature;
and I go along with nature."

PLAYBOY itself was also a pioneer in taking a publicly accepting and
open attitude toward sexuality.  In this sense, not only was Marilyn a
help in making PLAYBOY a success because of the public interest in her
nude calendar, she was also symbolically an ideal way to start the
magazine off because she herself embodied in her life what PLAYBOY
expressed in print.  Her Golden Dreams were also PLAYBOY's.  This
pairing could not have been more perfect.

Now, 50 years later, I can see Christina as possibly parallelling
Marilyn in this regard.  While I don't know that she will reach
Marilyn's level as a permanent cultural icon -- only time will tell
that -- she puts herself and her sexuality unashamedly out there like
Marilyn did.  Her way of clothing her body and presenting it publicly
gets many of the same types of comments that Marilyn did 50 years ago.
She stands for the empowerment of women, and speaks of her personal
beliefs with conviction as Marilyn did.  What is more, the public is
just as interested in seeing her as they were in seeing Marilyn.
Maybe she could help bring a new audience to PLAYBOY just as Marilyn
did 50 years ago.

If PLAYBOY sees this parallel, and deliberately makes note of it in a
meaningful way, whether in text or in cover art (or preferably both),
this could be the perfect way to inaugurate PLAYBOY's second 50 years.
It could be an auspicious start.

On the other hand, if they just slap her on the cover in the usual
formulaic way and ride on the coattails of her fame, they'll likely
lose my respect.  I certainly hope that doesn't happen.

Peggy Wilkins
mozart@lib.uchicago.edu