One atrocious tribute at the Met Gala, and now Kim’s name is automatically associated with Marilyn’s? Try staying committed to Marilyn drag your entire career. Which is exactly what Madonna has done. From the very beginning, the pop powerhouse has paid artful homage to Hollywood’s OG icon. From music videos to photoshoots to awards appearances, Madonna has never ceased in her devotion to the original blonde bombshell.
Having grown up on Old Hollywood classics that paraded the likes of Marilyn, Mae West and Marlene Dietrich, these are the types of multi-faceted women that Madonna has consistently interwoven into her own art, and with far less, shall we say, tickety-tackiness.
And it all started with her classic reinterpretation of Marilyn’s infamous “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, performed in the music video for 1985’s “Material Girl.” Not only did Madonna’s Marilyn drag seem to do the trick for luring in Sean Penn (who first met M on the set of that shoot), but it also established Madonna’s illustrious sense of irony that, even to this day, so often goes over people’s heads.
Directed by Mary Lambert, the entire premise of the video seeks to debunk what Madonna is actually saying in the lyrics. Instead, she is the antithesis of someone who wants a man that can only give her material things—in direct contrast to Marilyn’s very straightforward message in “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend.”
1985, in fact, turned out to be a very “Marilyn year” for Madonna, as she also played the star on Saturday Night Live, doing a sendup of her affairs with not only Bobby and Jack, but also, for the purposes of the sketch, Teddy and Joe Sr. Madonna additionally lampooned her much-attacked-by-paparazzi wedding to Penn in that same SNL episode. And, although Madonna might have met and wed Penn in ’85, she also happened to meet JFK Jr. the same year after performing at the very place where Marilyn Monroe sang, “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” It was a meeting that would stick with both until they began a brief dalliance circa ‘87-‘88 (complete with later rumors about peanut butter being involved in their sexual encounters, and Madonna rebuffing them by saying she would never use peanut butter because it has too many calories). However, as 1986 rolled around, Madonna had more pressing matters to attend to: her first major reinvention.
Some could see the immediate Marilyn comparisons when M shed her dirty blonde, often greasy-looking locks in favor of a short, platinum-blonde coif that she immortalized on the cover of True Blue. Her homage to the screen queen continued in the misunderstood-when-it-comes-to-camp-appreciation Who’s That Girl, released the following year. For, in addition to doing her best imitation of Carole Lombard and Judy Holliday in their own screwball comedies, toward the third act, Madonna appears in a form-fitting white dress that very much mimics the Marilyn style of both her 1952 Life magazine cover and one of her costumes in The Prince and the Showgirl.
Madonna’s awareness of the tight white dress as Marilyn’s ultimate glamor signature also turned up rather notoriously at the 1991 Academy Awards (you know, back when the Academy Awards were still glamorous). Appearing in a jeweled white dress designed by Olivier Theyskens, M rounded out the look with a white fur stole, white full-length gloves and a glittering diamond necklace. Oh, and Michael Jackson as her date (something Kim herself would imitate as a Halloween costume, with Kourtney as Michael… and honestly, that looked more like “Gilded Glamor” than what the family was attempting at the Met Gala). Paying tribute to this Old Hollywood style because of the song she was singing that night, “Sooner or Later,” M effortlessly channeled Marilyn’s own campy rendering of sexuality as she took the stage to belt out the ditty that would ultimately win for Best Original Song.
Throughout the 90s, Madonna would continue to emulate Marilyn’s aesthetic in photoshoots and music videos alike (see: “Secret,” “Bedtime Story”), always remaining hopelessly devoted where others would only do one-off homages. And yes, let us not forget her cameo on 1993’s SNL, when she dressed in a knockoff of Marilyn’s shimmering, tight, floor-length gown (long before Kim ever knew about the moment’s existence) to parody “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” as “Happy Inauguration, Mr. President” with “Bill and Hillary Clinton” sitting in the audience instead. And yes, “Bill’s” titillation over Madonna’s performance drove home the point that Clinton and Kennedy had a similar problem when it came to keeping it in their pants.
Marilyn also turned up very notably again for Madonna in the 2012 video for “Give Me All Your Luvin’,” when she, in conjunction with M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj, donned blonde wigs as a direct nod to the screen star. Her promotional shoots for the Rebel Heart album in 2015 also had her embarking upon familiar “Marilyn look” territory.
Then, in 2021, Madonna “dared” to give her most “shocking” interpretation of Marilyn yet by posing for V Magazine on a bed next to pill bottles as though “re-creating” her death scene. Leave it to Madonna to still manage to cause outrage among the masses at sixty-three years old by playing with notions of how being a celebrity can so often lead to being out of control (as Johnny Depp’s enabling coterie has revealed throughout the defamation trial between himself and Amber Heard). Which, in turn, causes some of the brightest stars to burn out too soon.
M, in fact, is a rare example of a celebrity who never fell prey to the drug-related trappings of fame (unlike her contemporaries, Michael and Prince), always remaining completely in control. In that sense, Madonna has little in common with Mar. But when it comes to feeling totally rudderless without a mother from an early age, Madonna can undoubtedly identify with Norma Jeane. Both women seeking approval from the world when they couldn’t get it from any parental figure (Madonna’s dad being very “that don’t impress me much” and Marilyn’s dad being totally absentee, much like her mom, who was in and out of mental institutions).
And so, in effect, please do not ever instantly associate Kim with Marilyn because she donned a dress (it being among the worst possible fashion choices she could make when it comes to poor taste, for this frock dishonors both Marilyn and Jackie in manifold ways) one fucking time and gave herself a shoddy dye job for the night. After all, true commitment to someone is shown over a lifetime of consistent homage.
