The death of Anna Nicole Smith in 2007 brought back people's discussion over the cursed fate of Playboy's cover girls. In the past 50 years, 25 playmates were dead without a natural cause. For instance, 3 of them were murdered, 5 were killed by overdose, 4 were involved in a fatal car accident, 12 succumbed to incurable disease and 1 had a plane crash. Of course, the one that generated the most media coverage was celebrity icon Marilyn Monroe, who is still the most memorable and irreplaceable icon of all time.
Marilyn Monroe was forsaken by her biological mother ever since she was a toddler. While she was raised by her adopted family, her "father" habitually assaulted her throughout her youth. Such pain left her a big shadow that she had to drag along into her adulthood.
In 1953, Hugh Hefner spent $500 on buying Marilyn nude photo from a photographer and using on the first edition of Playboy magazine. At the time, Marilyn was not famous just yet. But after all of the 50,000 copies of Playboy got sold in an instant, Marlyn became the sex symbol in every American boy’s fantasy.
After Marilyn achieved her fame as a hot celebrity, she was, at first, overwhelmed with the attention and admiration she received from everybody. From the outside, she appeared to be a confident and strong woman, but whenever she was alone by herself, she would feel extremely insecure and panic because of this psychological impairment that still haunted her constantly. She was afraid that one day, people's affection and loyalty for her would disappear even faster than her memory of the moment her mother dumped her at the orphanage. Although Marliyn was a perfect shell in front of the cameras, under that shell, she was pierced with millions of holes.
As time went on, Marilyn was pulled even further apart between her contradicting identities. In the eyes of her fans, she was a goddess, but from her so-called friends or lovers, she couldn't see any value of herself in their eyes. People betrayed her because she was Marilyn Monroe, yet they also left her because she was not the supposed celebrity, "Marilyn Monroe". She was a human being as well as an icon and famous celebrity. Life was too harsh.
In order to cope, Marilyn started to using drugs and sleeping pills. She would depend on 20 Barbital pills each night to put her into sleep. While at work, she was stuttering uncontrollable during filming and had trouble remembering her words. She asked for help from psychiatrist and was once admitted to the hospital for acute treatment. Yet, there was still no solution to her problem. It was beyond repair. Finally, at age 36, she was found died on her bed. She left a mystery to the investigators, because her face was deeply ironed inside her pillow. It was a very odd position. Could it be an intentional suicide or an accidental overdose, or else?
Again, Marilyn Monroe was broken into two pieces when she vanished from this world. On the front stage, she still looked like the fabulous celebrity in her casket as her fans were giving their last goodbye, but on the backstage, her dissected body with all of her organs removed was secretly photographed by journalists who paid a great amount of money under table. People still refused to leave her alone...
Nowadays Marilyn Monroe continuous to be the mold for every celebrity to imitate. They try to reassemble her pose during famous photo shooting where she wore a white halter dress, standing over a grate; they go for plastic surgery to tattoo a tiny black mole in the same position above her lip as she had; they feel honored when being called "Marilyn" even though their names are not.... but how many of these people really understand the fact that this mold of Marilyn was made up with shining glass that can be easily shattered into countless pieces with only one crack?
