A Controversial ‘Sexist’ Marilyn Monroe Statue Installed in Palm Springs

Multiple protests, a popular petition, a legal action and a small fire have not been enough to stop the city of Palm Springs from installing a supersized and “hyper-sexualized” Marilyn Monroe sculpture on a public site next to the Palm Springs Art Museum. On Sunday, city council members presided over a dedication ceremony for the sculpture by late artist Seward Johnson known as “Forever Marilyn” — or #metoomarilyn by those who find it exploitative — that shows the actress with her white dress flying up above her waist. There was no damage from the fire, which took place ​10 days ago when welders were working on sculpture and some bubble wrap started smoking.

People visit the "Forever Marilyn" statue unveiled today on its return to Palm Springs, California on June 20, 2021. - The 26-foot tall and 17-ton sculpture by artist Seward Johnson Atelier was displayed earlier this decade in Palm Springs, but the return has drawn the ire of residents on infringement of surrounding natural landscape views and on allegations the statue is sexist and innapropriate, despite the popularity of Marilyn Monroe's iconic dress-flying pose from the 1955 comedy "The Seevn Year Itch." - RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY MENTION OF THE ARTIST UPON PUBLICATION - TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVENT AS SPECIFIED IN THE CAPTION (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY MENTION OF THE ARTIST UPON PUBLICATION - TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVENT AS SPECIFIED IN THE CAPTION / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY MENTION OF THE ARTIST UPON PUBLICATION - TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVENT AS SPECIFIED IN THE CAPTION (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s