Forever Dying: Dead Women and Their Grip on Girl Culture
- Bella Blue Bloss
- 4 minutes ago
- 7 min read
On the phenomenon of having a “favourite dead girl” — from Marilyn Monroe to Sylvia Plath — and what it means to let women live in peace.
Dogs may be man’s best friend — but a girl’s are usually famous dead women. Whether it be Laura Palmer, Princess Diana, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, Sharon Tate, Marilyn Monroe, Lux Lisbon, Ophelia, Juliet, Amy Winehouse, or Sylvia Plath (the list is truly endless), we all have one that haunts us. But what is it about these dead women that has such a hold on culture, and, more specifically, on girl culture?
Historically, men have sexualised the dead bodies of women, most notably in the Victorian era. Pale, gaunt-looking women were the standard of beauty at the time, immortalised in the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite artists. Dead women were the ideal, preserved in their youth, forever beautiful and passive. Is it still about looks, purity, and youth now that it is girls who love them, or is it something deeper? Edgar Allan Poe famously said, “The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.”
I have been thinking a lot about this obsession with dead women, as the gallery I work in has been tirelessly prepping for their exhibition marking the 100th birthday of Marilyn Monroe. As portraits of her are plastered across gallery walls and social media, excitement and anticipation have been high among visitors, bringing one of the most well-known and adored dead women back to the forefront of popular culture. Marilyn Monroe is an example of a woman who was primarily loved and watched by men, and even in her death in 1962, she was subject to obsessive male behaviour. Notably, Playboy's founding father, Hugh Hefner, purchased the plot next to hers, and the plot above went from her ex-husband Joe DiMaggio to entrepreneur Richard Poncher, whose widow sold it to an anonymous bidder on eBay in 2009. Poncher reportedly had told his wife, “If you don’t put me upside down over Marilyn, I’ll haunt you for the rest of my life.” Monroe had no control over the men she would be lying in eternity with, and no way to fight against their sexual motivations. In death, she has still never been left alone.
Despite the almost constant male attention, I have observed that it is primarily women and teenage girls who have shown the most interest and excitement in the gallery’s exhibition. Monroe’s legacy has become more than just her sex symbol status; she is now recognised as a talented comedic actress and businesswoman, fighting for women’s independence and agency in the film industry. The public hardly knew her, and yet the adoration and obsession with her are global and constant.
Just under a year after Marilyn Monroe, Sylvia Plath died — another woman wronged by men and adored by women post-death. Many girls' and young women’s first encounter with her was on Tumblr: seeing quotes from her poems and journals pasted over aesthetic images, poetry inspired by her, black-and-white pictures of her from when she was young, and, of course, many references to her death. What seems to come along with a love for her work is an immediate knowledge of and focus on her infamous suicide. Plath died from putting her head in a gas oven in her home in London in 1963. Plath’s struggles with mental health and her attempts at suicide throughout her life are very present in her work; her words are so deeply personal that it is impossible to disconnect an interest in her from her untimely end. In every generation since her death, girls relate to her words, whether through her poems, by seeing themselves in Esther from The Bell Jar, or by finding solace in the pages of her journals.
Over the decade that I have known about Sylvia Plath, I have been in two minds about the obsession with her suicide. References to Plath’s death happen a lot in popular culture: we see people with DIY cardboard ovens over their heads on Halloween; the Gilmore Girls making jokes about it 20-odd years ago; Emma Roberts’ character in Adult World attempting suicide in the same way; girlbloggers posting “I am one bad day away from sticking my head in the oven”, and even a fake porn thumbnail with the title “young MILF gets stuck in the oven.” Although I understand that her death is undeniably connected with her body of work and, in turn, is an easy way to refer to her or honour her, the visuals and memes related to it often come across as mockery, and it seems that is entirely what Plath is reduced to: the woman who stuck her head in an oven. We rarely, if ever, see the same happen to male artists: Kurt Cobain, Jeff Buckley, Nick Drake, etc.
The most recent visual reference to Plath’s suicide was in Lana Del Rey’s music video for “White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter,” bringing Plath’s death to the forefront of popular culture once again. In the song, Rey coos about how wonderful her husband is, so much so that she wants to cook for him, an unusual and out-of-character desire for her oeuvre. The homemade music video compiles clips of Rey singing the song in her house; in one, she is seen from behind in a satin bronze skirt, seductively putting her head in the oven. This irked many fans. Rey often references Plath in her lyrics and poems; she clearly has an affinity for her work, as many women do, and it is unquestionable that this was also the case. This visual, however, comes across as erotic and at the same time romantic, considering the song’s lyrical content. This imagery, along with the lyric “I know you wish you had a man like him, it's such a bummer,” appears distasteful, considering Plath had a tumultuous relationship with her husband, Ted Hughes, which many relate to as a factor in her death. The discourse around Rey’s music video spanned a wide breadth of reactions, with some saying it is disrespectful to visually mimic someone's suicide, while others defended Rey, who has alluded to suicide attempts in the past and perhaps is using the imagery as a tool to communicate her healing. Despite Rey’s reasoning and intent, which we do not know, there is still a level of romanticisation which Plath’s family has continuously spoken out against. Plath’s daughter Freida Hughes wrote a poem titled “My Mother” where she said “Their Sylvia Suicide Doll, who will walk and talk and die at will, and die, and die and forever be dying,” emphasising how Plath will remain a dependable victim of her death if people continue to manipulate and aestheticise her image in that way, making her a visual symbol of tragedy as opposed to an important literary icon.
Figures like Plath no longer exist in our current culture, at least beyond reference. We are in an age where artists are no longer just artists, but commodities; they are marketing opportunities, walking advertisements. We romanticize dead women like Plath because her suffering wasn't a commodity — she wasn't performing it; she was living it, and she wrote about it because that is all she could do. We don’t have a 21st-century Plath and we never will. Girls obsessing over and referencing Plath isn't necessarily a desire to be her, but instead an escape from artists today. Plath was confessional, raw, and honest about her struggles with mental illness; it's almost impossible to find anyone now who doesn't have a BetterHelp sponsorship or a discount code for anti-anxiety meds.
In that way, Rey references Plath because she doesn't fit the narrative of contemporary celebrity culture. Rey leans on nostalgia and on artists of the past who had experiences similar to hers; she rarely relies on advertising. She is far from a modern-day Plath, but much like how we look to dead female artists for authenticity, Rey looks to them for inspiration.
Monroe has also been an overriding symbol in Rey’s work both visually and lyrically. In her music video for the song “Candy Necklace,” Rey takes on the personas of doomed Hollywood starlets: Veronica Lake, Elizabeth Short (more commonly known as the Black Dahlia) and Marilyn Monroe. The video offers a behind-the-scenes look at filming a music video: hair and makeup being applied, camera equipment, lighting, set design, and Rey talking to the team.
The song critiques the exploitative nature of media success, especially for female stars. In the video, Rey explains the concept to her team: “Why it was all supposed to be behind the scenes was because all these women who changed their names and changed their hair like me, it’s like they all fell into these different snake holes. So the whole point is like, ‘How do you learn from that and not fall into your own thing?’” The “snake holes,” I imagine, allude to the coping mechanisms that many stars develop to deal with the pressures of success — drug addiction, alcoholism, surgical procedures, suicide. In her scene as Marilyn Monroe, Rey is sitting in an Eames chair in a mid-century style room, dressed in a black turtleneck and trousers, a blonde wig, and a diamond necklace. She poses like Monroe in some clips and appears sad and contemplative in others, expressing the contrast between performance and reality. Rey, through this video and song, implies that being a woman in this industry inevitably leads to demise. The end of the video heavily alludes to the deaths of all of these women, visualised through the necklaces and diamonds falling into a pool of blood and a shot, Sunset Boulevard-style, of paparazzi photographing from above, capturing the dead body.
We all cling to these women of the past because we crave what we no longer have in our culture. Sabrina Carpenter is branding herself as a 1950s starlet; Legally Blonde is coming out with a prequel series; Brutes by Dizz Tate was pitched as “The Virgin Suicides meets The Florida Project.” Is it still possible to pioneer originality, or are we only capable of selling a sense of nostalgia?
People like Marilyn Monroe and Sylvia Plath represent emblems of their crafts, and now all we see are others attempting to echo or reimagine their careers. It’s easier to sell yourself as an artist, especially in an age when virality is the quickest road to fame, if you echo the familiar. And although people love the nostalgia that these artists provide, constantly seeing these references played over and over again is becoming exhausting.
When you have a favourite dead person, all you have is their art and an idea of them. You don't have to stay up to date with their brands or personas, or question if what they're doing is a publicity stunt. Dead people can’t enter a new “era”. It is all authentically them and the art that outlives them.
They give us a different perspective, a fantasy, an escape. Perhaps our only escape from the algorithm. 🌀
Bella Blue Bloss is a writer and editor from London. She runs the Substack blog Fragmentary Girl, where she publishes essays on feminism, art, culture, literature, and fashion, exploring female representation in the visual arts and media. Bella is currently working on her first book, an essay anthology edited and written by herself and other up-and-coming feminist writers. You can find more of her work on her website and follow her on Instagram @bellabluebloss.
