Stop. Worshiping. Audrey Hepburn.
Already mad? Guess what else. She has more in common with Marilyn Monroe than you think.
It’s nearly impossible to be a human in the world — let alone a woman, let alone a woman with a Pinterest account — and not have at least a passing familiarity with (if not a deep, if unexamined affection for) the icon that is Audrey Hepburn.
We seem to toss around the word “icon” pretty loosely these days (and we admittedly love to talk about how loosely we toss around the word “icon” these days), but Audrey Hepburn is definitely the kind of figure that the term is supposed to represent. It’s a word reserved for people whose overall legend precedes even the works that earned them their legendary status. For people whose stardom reaches both the highest and the lowest echelon: whose personal property could be auctioned at Christie’s for millions, who are the subjects of multiple coffee table books, whose images appear on cheap prints assembled in Asian sweatshops and sold for $7.99 at Target to freshmen trying to class up their dorm rooms. So if you didn’t know that the origin of the term “icon” refers to a specific type of artwork depicting a subject of religious worship, you’re probably not shocked to hear about it.
This is where I should say something about how in modern times, celebrities are our new gods, yadayada — you’ve heard this deconstruction before. But the modern beatification of Audrey Hepburn feels particularly earnest in this regard. Something about her status reads as genuinely sacred, doesn’t it? Whether she’s being glorified by actual classic movie fans who hail Roman Holiday as the best romcom of all time, or by casual girly-girls, who think of her mainly as a fashion icon (based on like, maybe four memorable outfits tops — three of them from Breakfast at Tiffany’s and one from Funny Face), her image is ubiquitous and universally aspirational. It’s also heavily romanticized and grossly over-simplified, but we’ll get to that.
Because it first should be noted that at least some of this recognition is extremely well deserved. Hepburn was, after all, a tremendously, gorgeously, almost painfully talented actor. (“Painfully” in the way that some people portray vulnerability so believably that it empathically hurts.) And the fashion stuff isn’t without merit; Hepburn was, after all, the personal muse of designer Hubert de Givenchy. Also, make of it what you will, but her very slender silhouette was undeniably ahead of the curve as the exact physique that would become the most desirable in the realms of fashion and on-camera entertainment in general. Additionally, Hepburn’s humanitarian efforts definitely represented a level of selfless altruism that begins to echo the reputations of actual saints. Images from 1980s UNICEF ads of her embracing emaciated orphans amid the detritus of famine ravaged Ethiopia are burned into the minds of many — though whether that “many” includes her Pinterest/coffee table book/dorm room following is unclear.
Personally, even though there’s yet to be any hard data collected to back this hypothesis up, I don’t think that most of Ms. Hepburn’s devotees are particularly into her because she was a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF. Call me a cynic, I’m just going by what’s largely been propagated about her on Pinterest and Tumblr (warning: that link includes a lot of images of little girls and babies dressed up by their unforgivable parents as Hepburn’s Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s).
For those who actually know about Hepburn’s devotion to charitable work, it definitely helps to make the passive worship of her feel like more of a benign, even high minded exercise — like she’s more deserving of our admiration and thus, we should somehow feel good about ourselves for admiring her. But let’s be real; isn’t that just a loophole? Unless Audrey Hepburn’s tireless volunteer work actually inspires you to get up and give your own time or money to those less fortunate (and seriously, good on you if it does), then her cult of celebrity isn’t terribly different from any other Golden Age star. In fact, the pop culture legacy of Audrey Hepburn actually bears a striking resemblance to that of another bigger than-life-actress, one who on the surface, might seem like her antithesis: Marilyn Monroe.
This probably sounds like blasphemy to Hepburn’s die-hard followers. There is indeed a perception out there that Hepburn is somehow the classier, smarter, more evolved idol of choice, almost like the “thinking girl’s” answer to a Monroe fetish. But that’s patently ridiculous; they’ve both simply been reduced to totems in the public consciousness that represent different things. Marilyn has become the pop culture goddess of glamour, sensuality, and sex appeal, of openness and outwardness, of unmistakably American excess. Pop history has anointed her the patron saint of the curvaceous female body type, of being a beautiful mess, of wanting unabashedly to be romantically and sexually fulfilled, of not having your shit figured out and not apologizing for it. Again, this is all based mainly on what’s been propagated about her on Pinterest and Tumblr (warning: that link includes a lot of images of little girls and babies dressed up by their unforgivable parents as Monroe’s Girl in the White Dress from The Seven Year Itch).
Conversely, it’s apparently been decided that Audrey is the pop culture goddess of elegance, intellect, and integrity, of introspection and introversion, of quintessential European sophistication. Popular history has named her the saint of the willowy, waifish feminine body, of appearing dignified no matter what you’re going through. She embodies the fantasy of being so into your fiercely independent, intellectually and ethically rigorous pursuits that you don’t care at all about cosmetic beauty — even though you just happen to be empirically gorgeous and (gasp) you don’t even know it. There’s something kind of gross and very prevalent about that fantasy but honestly, I’m not here to shame any of us for it. Actually, this element kind of extends to Monroe too.
It comes from a key element to both of their lasting legacies, something that they share in common. They each project the image of being sort of fragile birds, unknowing and even innocent in spite of anything else about them that implies worldliness. It seems odd at first, but when you think about it, it isn’t all that surprising. Seeing vulnerability in these otherwise insurmountably lofty women is what makes them feel relatable, as contrary as that is to the notions of perfection we simultaneously project onto them. We somehow, via the roles they played, the stories we may have heard about them, and a cherry-picked selection of things they may or may not have actually said, tend to imagine both Hepburn and Monroe as not having thought of themselves as particularly pretty or glamorous, even though their savviness at their jobs makes this highly unlikely.
I actually have a pet theory that this unknowing quality and the relatability it lends is the reason both Monroe and Hepburn have become as universally recognized and exalted as they are — while Grace Kelly, who shares the same top-tier stature in terms of Classical Hollywood-age sophistication, isn’t pictured on anywhere close to as many wall prints and cell phone cases. Her persona didn’t project innocence, timidness, or unchecked vulnerability, it projected sleek confidence and guileful knowingness. She may have never boasted about it, but Kelly’s roles and choices give us the feeling that she knew exactly how stunning and talented she was. This renders her too perfect — she’s beyond aspiration and thus, her visage doesn’t imprint itself onto the part of our brain that makes us want to make our five year old dress up as her for Halloween.
Anyway, that unassuming nature we associate with both Hepburn and Monroe is part of what makes them equally beloved. But it’s not the only thing they have in common. Think about it: the most notable trait they each possess is the fact that they both occupy such an enduring, illustrious, and pervasive space in the collective consciousness. The two of them stand together on a single, shared pedestal in our culture’s mental pantheon — in addition to literally appearing together on a truly insane number of products and images considering that these are two women who were never actually photographed together in their lives. I probably don’t actually need to cite Pinterest and Tumblr to make my point this time, but I tell you what — it doesn’t hurt my case (warning: if you didn’t think there were a significant number of pictures circulating on the internet in which two young children dress up as Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe together, you were quite mistaken).
Indeed, just in case you haven’t figured it out yet, the reason Audrey and Marilyn enjoy such cultural ubiquity in a way that surpasses even beloved stars like Liz Taylor and of course, Grace Kelly, is because they fulfill the roles we desire them to play not as people, but as archetypes. They’re the yin and the yang. No, screw that — this is a distinctly American phenomenon (we cultural descendants of Puritans do love our madonna/whore dichotomies) so let’s not pretty it up with religious appropriation that makes it sound deeper than it probably is. They’re Betty and Veronica. They’re Ginger and Mary Ann. They (well, their lasting images, at least) represent two idealized sides of a woman that we seem to have a lot of trouble picturing as fully integrated.
The only problem (which should go without saying but you can bet your ass it doesn’t) is that this way of thinking is embarrassingly reductive. You have to present their two separate, simplified personas together in order to create a representation of a whole person. And of course, this kind of hero worship does absolutely no justice to the flawed, nuanced, complex people these two women were. Marilyn wasn’t all tight, pink wiggle dresses and red lipstick and sex. And Audrey wasn’t all elegant black gowns and quiet reading and a weird lack of sex (she was married twice and had two kids after all). If either of their projected senses of unassuming, unknowing innocence were real, that phenomenon probably had something to do with Monroe being raised without a stable or loving parent in a number of foster homes where she was sexually abused, and Hepburn growing up in the Nazi occupied Netherlands, where terror, violence, and acute famine became the hallmarks of her childhood. And hey, for deep-dive fans who know these things about them, hopefully that knowledge adds dimension (and not just the awkward sheen that comes from romanticizing great suffering). But for obsessees who don’t, the fact that so much of these two figures’ inherent charisma derives at least on some level from arrested emotional development due to trauma just starts to feel dirty.
Not to mention that if either Hepburn or Monroe really were as one-note as the internet’s collection of tributes, images, and carefully curated, out-of-context (and probably spuriously attributed) quotes from them would indicate, then neither of these women would be whole people who are worthy of our adulation. Nobody so one dimensional should be considered a paragon of anything. The previously mentioned notion some die-hard Hepburn-only fans have in their heads that she’s an inherently better pop culture idol is kind of silly too. In fairness, the cult that sprung up around Audrey in this regard probably originally happened as a reaction against the idealization of bombshells like Marilyn and what felt like a lot of unfair and old fashioned standards for what makes an ideal woman. What if you like reading and being reticent? What if you aren’t into va-va-voom glamour and sex appeal? Well then here you go, American culture, Audrey’s your girl.
But ironically, the virtues Hepburn represents without Monroe standing next to her as her counterpart are just as oppressive as the ones she was placed on that pedestal to counteract (unless, again, her charity work really is present in the minds of those who hold her up as an ideal, which, for a great many of them, I doubt). Enforcing the notion that the ideal woman is refined and restrained, that she likes when things are quiet and enjoys being alone, that her body is extremely thin (even if this “virtue” flies under the guise of being a way she disregards the male gaze — a tough sell in a society that at this point prizes thinness anyway) is all pretty oppressive if none of these qualities map to you. What if you aren’t naturally quiet and introspective, what if you’re effusive and boisterous and loud? What if your natural taste doesn’t gravitate toward elegant black but toward plunging necklines or bright colors? What if you’re flirtatious? What if you like being the object of the male gaze now and then, and don’t think you should have to concede your right to be thought of as a thinking, feeling human being just because you also like to feel sexy?
In that case, Hepburn isn’t a better goddess of pop culture for you to pray to, she’s just the other side of a coin. Well, her indelible image in pop culture is. The actual Audrey Hepburn wasn’t an abstract idea or a goddess or saint of anything — she was an actor. An actor so skilled at her craft that the qualities she evinced on screen inspire legions to chase after her persona as a path toward perfection. So maybe the best way to bow down and pay proper tribute to her isn’t to hang her image on our walls or imitate her clothing choices but to sit down in front of one of her movies and appreciate her for being so damn good at her job.
