Marilyn Monroe Foreshadowed This

Valley girl sex workers

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“But get that ice or else no dice.”

-Marilyn Monroe, “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” 1953.

When Twentieth Century-Fox coordinated a press opportunity for Marilyn Monroe to be photographed at Van Nuys High School, the studio relied heavily on Valley Girl¹ shorthands to communicate her biography. Readers of Look magazine were incentivized to see the newly recognizable face² with school books and write the rest themselves: a wholesome, white, middle-class suburban girl who just happened to be a sexy actress. But in contrasting a Valley Girl with a burgeoning sex icon, the studio was foreshadowing a very 20th century tension: the valley girl³ as sex worker.

Marilyn Monroe Was a Valley Girl