Member-only story
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes — A Lesson on Despair
Not As Feminist a Tale As We’d Like To Believe
Subtly feminist, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes offers some interesting, and yet timeless life lessons, despite the era it represents. Ever since, the movie has been revisited by people who found key scenes striking and memorable. But because of these key scenes, I often feel like the story is taken out of context and has been reinvented to be a feminist piece, when that’s not quite true.
This piece will feature and explore two topics, the representations of sexism we see in the movie, and the more global life lessons it features.
The premise is of Lorelei Lee. We first meet her outer layer, and there are several currents all mingled there: there’s men’s timeless perception of women, there’s how she is presented to the audience, and there’s how her époque perceives women.
In the timeless way men perceive women, Lorelei is seen as particularly attractive. That also criss-crosses in how she is presented, because her persona is that of the ditzy, seemingly stupid, downright submissive woman — something that plays into the projected fantasy of any stupid short-sighted man.
People of her era had a difficult time seeing through this obvious veil, an image Monroe used on-screen and off-screen, and…
