Marilyn: The Influencer
Long before Instagram,
TikTok, or the algorithms that now decide what we see, there was a woman who
turned every appearance into a cultural event. Marilyn Monroe didn’t need Wi-Fi
to go “viral.” It was enough for her to walk through a door, tilt her head, or
speak with that breathy voice for the world to stop. What we now call a
“trending topic,” she generated simply by existing. She was a movie star, yes.
But she was also something more unsettling and modern: the first person to
master—and pay the price of—the logic of massive influence.
Marilyn understood the
power of image like few others. Nothing was accidental: every pose in front of
the cameras, every crystalline laugh, every movement of her platinum hair was
charged with intention. She could read the press better than a modern digital
strategist reads “views.” She knew when to smile, when to stay silent, when to
disappear so she would be missed more. She knew that a white dress billowing
over a subway grate could say more than a thousand interviews. Although the
studio shaped her persona, she perfected it until it became an unmistakable
brand. In the fifties, she was simply Marilyn being Marilyn: an identity
carefully crafted to captivate the entire world.
Her influence generated
constant conversation: imitations, rumors, magazine covers, scandals. Her face
circulated through magazines, shop windows, and calendars with the same speed
as today. When Marilyn changed her hairstyle, half the world followed. When she
wore a lipstick shade, it sold out in stores. When she appeared in a new dress,
she defined the season’s trend. In today’s terms: she sparked emotions, set
style, and ignited passions with a naturalness that seemed like pure magic.
But like many creators
today, sustaining such a luminous public identity required hiding the cracks,
the sleepless nights, the doubts. The Marilyn who laughed on screen coexisted
with Norma Jeane, who feared not being enough, who longed for serious roles in
a system that only wanted disposable glamour from her. She lived under the
pressure of being watched, judged, and consumed twenty-four hours a day, long
before anonymous blog comments existed. Her story reveals something
uncomfortable: the tension between the real person and the brand didn’t begin
with social media. It just became visible to everyone.
Even today, we look at
Marilyn Monroe recognizing that her life anticipated our era. She embodied the
paradox of being loved by millions yet feeling profoundly alone. Of having a
powerful public voice and still not being heard in private. Perhaps that’s why
we remain hypnotized: because in observing her, we understand something about
ourselves in this world saturated with images and impossible expectations.
Marilyn Monroe wasn’t
just the last great star of old Hollywood. She was the first global
“influencer.” And her story leaves us with an uncomfortable question for this
digital age: have the mechanisms of fame really changed, or have only the
platforms where it’s consumed changed?
Perhaps Marilyn’s most
unsettling lesson is not that she was ahead of her time, but that we never
advanced in ours. We continue consuming people as content, turning
vulnerabilities into spectacle, demanding authenticity while punishing any
imperfection. Decades later, with all our technology, we are still building the
same golden cages. Only now we call them “platforms,” and anyone who enters
does so under a contract no one reads but everyone signs: your image in
exchange for relevance, your privacy in exchange for “likes,” your mental
health in exchange for staying visible. Maybe Marilyn warned us. And we, the
consumers of fantasies, chose not to listen.
