Photo Analysis of How Marilyn Monroe Dramatically Changed Her Appearance

Executive Summary

• Marilyn Monroe dramatically changed her appearance, making her look more white.
• This article analyses photos of her to present this case.

Introduction

This article was begun because it was brought to my attention that Marilyn Monroe’s mother was born in Mexico. That got me analyzing some of her photos and brought to my attention what might be a more interesting story. The story of Marilyn Monroe’s mother’s ethnicity is a bit cloudy. Mexicans are born in the US, but that does not make them ethnically white or European. It appears that Marilyn’s mother was at least mainly white, but let us just go off of the photo analysis.

Maryln’s Younger Photos

The way to get to Maryln’s authentic genetics and look is to look at her earlier photos. The photos of Marilyn when she was a movie start have much more cosmetics, dyed blond hair and eyebrows, and some cosmetic surgery, which I will get into in a moment as to what Marilyn did to her appearance.

This is a photo of Marilyn before she was a movie star. Her hair is very curly, and her hair color is medium brown. 

This is another photo from her youth. Her skin color is entirely white, and her eyes are blue, but you can see her hair’s very curly, almost matted texture on the right side of her face. Marylin looks Northern European. However, Northern Europeans without any non-Northern European genetics will not have this hair texture. For example, if we take Italy, Northern Italians have straight hair. But Southern Italians have a curl in their hair’s texture and while Northern Italians often have brown or even light brown hair, Southern Italians have jet black hair. Nearly all of the Italian actors in the US (ex.. Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, Al Pacino), as nearly all Italian immigrants to the US are from Southern, not Northern Italy.

Greeks, Spaniards, and Portugues also often have a curly hair texture. The reason for this is curls in hair create open spaces through which heat can escape. That is, curls are a type of “radiator” for the head. Curiously while curly hair is common in several regions closer to the equator — such as Africa, Southern Europe, and the Middle East, curly hair is not normally found in SouthEast Asia (much of which is close to the equator). Nor is curly hair common in Latin America among genetically pure Meso Americans (that is Indians without European ancestry). This is true even in Central America, which is right at the equator. This brings up the topic of how long Indians in the Americas were in what is now Latin America. It is thought that all Meso Americans came over the ice land bridge of what is now Central Asia around 30,000 years ago. Central Asia is a much colder climate (further north) than modern Latin America.

This means much of Latin American genetics evolved in a different location from where they currently live. As Latin Americans without European mixed ancestry are often very dark, this also indicates that skin color in humans changes under environmental pressure much more quickly than hair texture.

Therefore, while curly hair is not Northern European, it is also not common in Mexico or throughout Latin America except in those of strong Spanish or Portuguese ancestry. However, while Norma Jeane’s pictures show what seems to be Spanish curly hair, it’s not apparent that Norma Jeane has any Latino facial features.

This is another photo from her youth, but it is staged although not professionally taken as Norma Jeane is not yet a model in this photo. The photo is grainy and was most likely taken with a consumer-grade camera. It is part of several photos that clearly show that Marilyn, or at that time Norma Jeane, knew she would be taking several photos that day. I can’t be certain, but her hair appears to have been “brushed down” to look less curly. 

Notice the short height of her hair on top of her head. But then notice the body of the hair on the sides. Her hair has been straightened for this shoot.

Now observe the following two photos.

This is a non-staged photo taken with a consumer-grade camera. Now notice the height of her hair at the top of her head and how it matches the body of the hair on the sides, and how different this is than in the staged photo. 

Another impromptu or non-staged photo where Norma Jeane shows a lot of curls or body in her hair. This photo was not very well stabilized as there is a “blur” to the photo. This photo was probably taken by a non-photographer family member or friend. 

It is not just Norma Jeane (to the right, hidden behind the older woman), most of the women in this picture in her family have a lot of curl or body to their hair. Also, notice the hair texture of the woman and little girl to the left of the photo. Their hair appears to be approximate to Norma Jeane’s texture. However, this looks like a family of European descent. 

Another impromptu photo and another thick set of curls on Norma Jeane’s head. This is an excellent picture that shows the texture of Norma Jeane’s hair because the photo is of high quality, and the lighting is very good giving a strong 3-dimensional view of her hair, and also her facial features without too much makeup in the way. Norma Jeane’s hair was extremely curly. 

I believe this is a photo taken by a professional photographer who discovered Norma Jeane at a manufacturing facility and wanted to use her for wartime propaganda photos.

The photo looks professionally taken, but before her appearance was changed. She is still most likely doing her manufacturing job at this time. I have seen other photos very similar to this, and this is how Norma Jeane typically looked at that time.

Notice that her nose is broader than you will see in later photos. Marilyn later had cosmetic surgery to refine her facial features.

Now Norma Jean is a little deeper into her modeling career. Notice the pose is professional. The lighting is excellent, as is the tilt of the head and overall body positioning. Getting a photo like this means a number typically were taken, and this one stood out. The clothing is also upgraded in quality and cost from what we have seen in prior photos. It’s likely these clothes were not hers. Hence the evidence that this is a professional photoshoot.

The colors are also vibrant, indicating the use of a good quality film (obviously, good color photography is child’s play to obtain today, but one has to consider how different the technology was at the time the photo was taken).

And notice how her hair volume on top is once again pushed down and does not match her side volume.

Marilyn As a Blond

A photo from when Marilyn has changed her name and is a young actress at this point. Marilyn now has her signature platinum-dyed blond hair, although I think this is before cosmetic surgery as her nose is still broad and looks unchanged from her earlier photos. Looking at her face, “something seems off” and she does not entirely “look like Marilyn” because we are used to her later photos when she was a bigger star and she had cosmetic surgery already. 

Something interesting is that Marilyn must have had her hair dyed frequently to keep from showing her brown roots. Women today commonly die their hair blond to look younger and stand out; however, very few women will dye their hair completely blond to the roots and then maintain the upkeep of such frequent dying that no roots are visible.

And Marilyn did more than dye her hair but must have used some hair straightener, as her tight curls are now gone in these later photos and are replaced by longer curls or general “waves.”

Notice how different Marilyn looks in this photo above from all of the earlier photos. I am not privy to everything that was done (which cosmetic surgery, etc..), but she seems significantly different from her younger photos. She is wearing very large fake eyelashes, she now has her signature beauty mark and has very refined and comprehensive makeup, making her look very youthful. 

Another photo shows the dramatic changes to Marilyn’s appearance. She begins wearing furs and very high-end clothing. She is a well-paid actress at this point in her life and is also married to a series of high-status and wealthy men. She probably had professional make-up people working on her, even for her public appearances. Whereas her youthful pictures show normal skin flaws, in her movie roles and in public appearances, her skin is completely uniform and smoothed out. As a person ages, they pick up more wrinkles and more blemishes as time passes, but Marilyn, with artificial assistance, looks more refined and perfected in her later photos than in her earlier photos even though she is significantly older. Marilyn is not only using makeup but is expertly using makeup to obtain this appearance. 

Furthermore, Marilyn picked up a number of drug addictions later in her life. So this means her beauty routine was not only contracting her natural aging (although she died at 36, so she is not very old in any picture) but had to counteract the negative effects of drugs. Some of the drugs she took were for sleeping assistance or increasing awareness — and like a number of actors at the time like Judy Garland, she ended up on an “upper downer” cycle. These drugs were promoted by the studios. This was a time when many actors and high-profile people were given drugs that they did not understand the implications of. I covered in the article How JFK and Adolf Hitler Became Addicted to Meth Amphetamine, how JFK was high on methamphetamine during several well-known debates (such as with Nixon) and during negotiations with Nikita Khrushchev.

As she progressed through her movie career, Marylin continually moved further away from her natural appearance. Notice in this photo that her hair has been even further straightened from what we saw in earlier photos.  

Maryln’s dyed hair color looked natural in black and white photos and black and white movies; however, in the natural light and with color photography, you can see how artificial Marilyn’s hair dye color was. No adult women have hair of that color, and it is usually lighter at the ends (where it has lightened due to the sun) than at the center or towards the scalp.

Any person with this hair color would draw a lot of attention simply because no one naturally has this hair color.

After Marilyn went blond, she never reverted in any picture I can find, and she would have had to have been obsessive about keeping her hair entirely blond as I also could not find pictures with any brown roots.

Conclusion

Marilyn dramatically changed her appearance and continued to do so even after she found her signature look. She did so with hair dye, hair straightener, cosmetic surgery, advanced make-up, professional make-up artists, and high-end clothing. Her change to herself was not limited to her appearance as her acting persona was not natural and a bit of a put-on. I was watching a Marilyn Monroe scene and found her accent very peculiar. She often spoke so softly that she sounded like a baby, and her accent does not appear to match any US region I am aware of, and Marilyn should have a California or neutral accent. Marilyn’s extension of certain vowels is so distinctive that it might as well be called a “Marilyn Accent.” I also don’t recall other actresses copying the accent unless they were doing a Marilyn Monroe impression. Therefore, she seemed to create her own way of speaking as well as her distinctive look.

Different actresses and actors change their appearance for movie roles. However, once Marilyn changed her appearance, she never wavered and was obsessive about maintaining that specific look. The only thing that changed was she continued to push in an increasingly artificial direction. This is something that would have taken significant effort as she did not look like the classic Marilyn that we see in pictures naturally. There are a couple of reasons that would explain this. One is that Marilyn was so successful with her later or classic look that she never wanted to look like she did before or how she looked naturally. Another reason was that she did not like how she looked naturally and did not want to revert to her more natural look, and furthermore did not want people to know that she looked very different from her constructed or artificial appearance.

Overall there is no other way of seeing her dramatic change in appearance than Marilyn made herself look more white. Before her transformation and stardom, she looked like a wholesome everywoman. However, after she began to look more like a Disney princess.