To Stay or Not to Stay

Sheila, Marilyn Monroe, Paris Hilton, and Meghan Markle

https://archive.org/details/TheseGirlsAreFools1956ExploitationShortWithNudeScene

An old, short film on The Internet Archive, the Marilyn Monroe movie on Netflix, and Meghan Markle’s latest podcast all got me thinking about feminine archetypes and stereotypes.

She kept undressing herself, in picture after picture. It’s a cautionary tale to young ladies. Don’t be like Sheila, the film implores, not in so many words, but the message is obvious. These Girls Are Fools (1950) is a 20-minute film about girls gambling with their lives on the chance to be Marilyn Monroe. Interestingly, this film was made in the year following Norma Jeane’s 1949 nudity scandal. Wikipedia mentions the scandal, citing Donald Spoto’s 2001 biography of Monroe. In the ‘40s, Monroe modeled in a number of calendar and artistic nudes. As a rising star, these gigs were increasingly, perhaps, a little bit embarrassing. Monroe, after all, was not fated, or slated to be one of those “foolish” girls. The Hollywood gods had something more illustrious in mind for her. She was one in a million. She was the chosen one, plucked and pruned for a very special purpose. We knew the broad strokes of her tragic story even before the outrageous Netflix movie Blonde (2022)—not a true biography by any means, but even with the film’s gross exaggerations, we know enough to instinctively feel that the depicted exploitation of Norma Jeane is probably somewhat close to the mark. Even where art is more fantasy than reality, there can be a ring of truth. Norma Jeane, rebranded as Marilyn Monroe, absolutely could not, from the studios’ perspective, be perceived as anything on the level of one of those foolish gamblers, flashing herself for chump change. Norma Jeane, to be sure, was a pawn, but Marilyn Monroe was a queen, a superstar, a goddess even. The cautionary tale in These Girls Are Fools was not made out of kindness. It was propaganda made to hold Sheila up for ridicule, for disdain. Don’t be a fool like Sheila, it said, without saying. You can’t be Marilyn, so don’t even try. Be a good girl. Learn to cook and sew. Say nightly prayers. Look cute but be modest in church. Speak softly, but carry a big purse.

At the same time, Hollywood always needs to have plenty of Sheilas, ready to do anything. Hollywood needs more Sheilas than it needs a One in a Million. The One in a Million comes in, thrives, suffers in silence, and makes a ton of money. The One in a Million is a cash cow that keeps on producing, long after her body is laid to rest. People write books about her. Books, oh yes, and movies too. But where is she, indeed, without all those Sheilas who long to be her?

Meghan, née Markle, “Duchess of Sussex,” talks about “the bimbo”—archetype, she says, for the “briefcase girl” she once was.

Critics of this episode have found fault with her choice of the word “archetype” in this context. “Bimbo” is a stereotype, not an archetype, they argue.¹ I would argue it is, in fact, both. The “bimbo” is typecast. Meghan as a Briefcase Girl (for the game show “Deal or No Deal”) acted the part of the Bimbo. She did it as well as any other. That’s not an insult. Neither is it a compliment, I suppose, but perhaps it should be. She was, after all, hired to do a very specific thing—the same sort of thing Vanna White did on “Wheel of Fortune”—and she did it. I like the part when she says, “I ended up quitting the show. Like I said, I was thankful for the job, but not for how it made me feel.” I appreciate the profound simplicity of the statement. She felt objectified, and that’s absolutely reasonable because she was. Meghan was a Sheila in those days—not literally, of course. She wasn’t nude. But, as we all know too well, you don’t have to be nude to be objectified. There is an implied nudity that comes with a certain manner of dressing, of walking, of acting. These implications are full of sexual charge—of innuendo, we might say—precisely because they invoke the objectification and exploitation of the body.

Paris Hilton, Meghan’s guest, is an enigma when it comes to this topic. I suppose she does represent the “dumb blonde” stereotype, and she has played into the archetype of the “bimbo” and the “party girl,” but she is, at the same time, the antithesis of the particular archetype Meghan invoked for this episode. Hilton was born rich, an heiress in the real-estate branch of the famous hotel-chain dynasty. In the 2000s, Hilton rose to fame (or infamy) as a sort of archetype (or stereotype, if you prefer) for the idle rich. She had too much money and too much time on her hands. What was a bored little rich girl like her to do? Party, of course! Make cameos in cheesy, cliched films! Sex tape, check. Reality show, check. For Hilton, I guess, she was just having fun. It wasn’t like she needed the money. She enjoyed it, and as she confesses in Meghan’s interview, there was some catharsis at work. If people thought she was a “dumb blonde,” well, it came with the territory. She was trailed by comparisons to Zsa Zsa Gabor, another blonde who had lots of fun, and who coincidentally counted Hilton’s great-grandfather among her nine husbands. Hilton was the quintessential “socialite,” before “socialite” became an overused word. She was “famous for being famous” before even that was, well, as cliched as ED medication.

Neither is Meghan Markle quite along the lines of the archetype discussed in her podcast. While not a hotel-chain heiress, Meghan grew up in fairly comfortable economic circumstances in Los Angeles County. Her dad had a proper job and good reputation in the entertainment industry at the time. He made enough money to send her to top-notch schools. She graduated from Northwestern, for crying out loud. It’s not a school where the “dumb ones” go.

For whatever reason, in spite of all their choices, Meghan Markle and Paris Hilton were drawn to highly-objectifying career paths. Moreover, they were drawn to the most objectifying end of the spectrum. Meghan wanted to be an actress, but not the “Shakespeare in the Park” kind of actress. I suppose she was a bit too cool for that school. The sexy legal drama was her forte. She played a very intelligent character on Suits, but as in her real persona, she was meant to play up both brains and body. A lot of the commentary around the “non-working” royal consort reduces her to having “peaked” with her Suits role, but actually, it seems to me that her role on Suits merely opened all the doors to everything that followed—starting with The Tig and culminating in marriage to Queen Elizabeth’s grandson. A lot of people seem to forget about The Tig, but I think it’s a very important chapter in Meghan’s story because it exemplifies so well the duality of her nature. On the one hand, there was the sassy, sexy paralegal she played on television. This allied so charmingly with the fashionista aspect in her social media presence. And then, on the other hand, there was the blogger, serving up commentary on food, wine, books, dogs, travel, and politics. A lifestyle blog, she called it. In style, falling somewhere between GOOP and Carrie Bradshaw, a lot of what Meghan wrote on The Tig was fluffy, commercialized, and a bit shallow; that can’t be denied. Still, there were hints of something more—diamonds in the ruff, perhaps. Articles like “Draw Your Own Box” and “I’m More Than An Other” come to mind as examples of the Meghan that was brewing.

I think she never should have married into the British royal family. She didn’t belong there. That world was simply never going to work out well for a Meghan Markle. Prince Harry was just too impulsive, and she was just too enamored of the glossier side of things to recognize, let alone accept it. Like Paris Hilton, she was drawn to all the exciting things about celebrity and royalty, but she didn’t like the way the cold hard realities made her feel. The cold, hard fact is that “celebrity” and “royalty” are businesses. Both are in business to sell something. One sells sex appeal. The other sells rule by divine right, pecking order, tradition, protocols. Would Meghan have enjoyed playing out, for the rest of her days, the archetypal duchess anymore than she enjoyed playing the Briefcase Girl? It turns out, she quit both. An archetype is, by definition, an absolute, and allows for no moderation, no half-in, half-out. Meghan is neither hero nor anti-hero. Meghan was no blushing Shy Di. Nor is she a conformist like her sister-in-law. Nor did she grow up in Berkshire, where people literally grow up living out the embodiment of slogans like “Keep Calm and Carry On.” (All right, that’s a stereotype. I apologize. But, honestly, did we really expect Meghan to assimilate in a subculture that prizes expressions like “just get on with it” and “never show emotion in public”?) Being neither like Sheila nor like Marilyn, being neither a Diana nor a Kate, Meghan won’t stay put where you try to put her. She is more than an Other.

1. The critics are almost too many to name. The usual suspects, mostly. Lady Colin Campbell, host of an obnoxious question-time on YouTube, is among these critics. With enemies like that, I guess Meghan is doing something right.