I was just watching the NBC5 Chicago news at noon, and snapped this picture of the telly, as reporter/meteorologist Alicia Roman reports from outside the Wrigley Building, and Chicago's Marilyn Monroe sculpture bares her underpants in the background, still "a giant, silent avatar of non-consent, posed forever to be a sexual object for the pleasure of passers-by." And viewers of the news.
[Trigger warning for implied violence.] Since Marilyn was erected, she has repeatedly been vandalized. Two weeks ago, two men rode up to the statue on bicycles and threw red paint on her, which ran down her leg like streaks of blood.
When I was talking with Paul the Spud about that incident, I noted that it could have been a cool feminist statement, if it had been intended—and placed—as blood speaking to her womanhood and humanity. But it was instead just randomly and aggressively sloshed on her, which is a very different message indeed.
And still Marilyn stands, washed clean of the evidence of the violence done to her, showing off her bottom on the afternoon news.
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