Is anyone tired of hearing the phrase “Marilyn Monroe is my hero?” I think I probably hear it about ten to twelve times on the first day of classes when teachers announce the commencement of the dreaded ice-breaker, where each student must awkwardly state their name, hometown, major, and their hero. During these times I’ll usually say my mom, or my dad, not wanting to “copy” the 14 other girls in the class who say “Marilyn is my hero.” (I should state that my mom and dad are truly my heroes, though tangible heroes present in my everyday life whom I tend not to appreciate as much as they deserve!). However, if I had to pick one person from history whom I could call my honest-to-goodness hero – and Harriet Tubman is a close second (did you know that she suffered from narcolepsy all those years she helped people travel the underground railroad to freedom!? Amazing, right?) – I would have to pick Marilyn Monroe. I don’t say this because of her beauty or her fame, I say it because of the way that she navigated her short, yet full, churning, sea of a life, and because of the message she left in her wake. Marilyn is heart-breakingly beautiful in every way, not only on the outside but on the inside, as well. She took chances, lived passionately and loved with everything she could. She never held back, and always tried her hardest to please everyone around her. She was the most selfless, amazing woman to ever grace the movie screen, but she forgot to love herself. I love Marilyn for her dedication to the people around her and her constant perseverance through good times and bad, but I mostly love her for her flaws. She believed in fairy-tale love and had her heart broken too many times. She was constantly worried about pleasing everyone around her and forgot to worry about pleasing herself. She fell victim to the pressure of the media and buckled under the massive amounts of stress it caused. She did many things right, and many things wrong, but in the end she was real. She was so much more than just a sex symbol, and she should have been around for so much longer, but society’s obsession with her took it’s toll too early. I hate being the one to agree with the masses in saying that Marilyn Monroe is a hero, but she absolutely, truly and undoubtedly is. She deserves every ounce of the homage that girls around the world pay to her every first day of school, because she lived her life honestly for the world to experience.

Goodbye Norma Jean
Though I never knew you at all
You had the grace to hold yourself
While those around you crawled
They crawled out of the woodwork
And they whispered into your brain
They set you on the treadmill
And they made you change your name 

And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would have liked to have known you 
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did

Loneliness was tough
The toughest role you ever played
Hollywood created a superstar
And pain was the price you paid
Even when you died
Oh the press still hounded you
All the papers had to say
Was that Marilyn was found in the nude

Goodbye Norma Jean
From the young man in the twenty second row
Who sees you as something as more than sexual
More than just our Marilyn Monroe

-Elton John