finding your inner marilyn

Holy camolie no blog posts in forever!  Well March was quite a blur of a month for me, which included trips to the only city I will ever be completely and totally infatuated with (I won't drop names yet, because Boise may get her feelings hurt), merry making with relatives, and work and school, but I've been going a little light on the school lately... Beware, I've been sitting on this blog post idear for a while, so it's a bit of a doozy...


BUT!  The one thing that I have been able to squeeze into my oh-so-busy-but-not-really schedule (somewhere between episodes of Desperate Housewives, which I sometimes call "Desperate," because I do this thing where I make fun of people that shorten down TV show titles, and do it for the sake of comedy, until I can't seperate comedy from reality and I start becoming the people I'm making fun of... and I'm also really good at putting long side notes into parenthesis... it's a real art form...)  is the TV show SMASH!  Is anyone else in love with this?  It's like glee on steroids (pretty sure I heard that on a commercial)...


If you haven't quite had the time to check out SMASH or you actually have one of those busy lives filled with meaning (boo!), then allow me to outline the basic premise.  It follows a group of overly talented people, some writers, some triple threat singer/dancer/actor (which I can TOTES relate to...), producers and so on.  A writing team comes up with the idea to base a musical off of THE Marilyn Monroe (ever heard of her?), and the trials and tribulations of trying to get that musical up and running.  That's the basic idea.


I've always admired Marilyn Monroe, and who doesn't adore pinning one of those inspirational pins about how Marilyn was curvy and told everyone to shove it on Pinterest?  But just what is it about her that's so captivating?  I have to say, it was her sense of entitlement.  Anyone who's never even heard of her (not sure if such a person exists, but you know, it could happen), just one look at a picture and I guarantee that person would say she seems confident.  Everyone says that the sexiest thing a person can wear is confidence, but excuse me, last time I checked, Gap was out of stock of confidence, so where can I buy mine? (Sorry, humor isn't exactly leaking out of my pores today....)


Now, believe it or not, Marilyn and I are not exactly personal friends, although I do like referring to her on a first name basis.  Kinda the way men like to refer to their favorite sports teams like they personally are on the team (i.e. "I'm nervous, we've got like no pitching this season!" Please let me know if mine is the only one who does this...).  But I'm thinking Marilyn did not ooze sex appeal 24 hours a day.  I'm thinking somewhere there are a few scars, a few blemishes, perhaps even, dare i say it, a little cellulite she may not have been happy about.


This is about to get real here.  Prepare for a Dani overshare:
I feel like I can't really remember the last time I didn't have some kind of self improvement plan in the back of my mind.  If I get this skirt, it will look so cute!  If I whiten my teeth, I'll look so much better.  Maybe if I buy that new mascara, my eyelashes will look as long as hers!  I know these things sound silly when I write them out here.  But don't we all do this?  Don't we all have some image in our head of how we want to look, how we could look with just this and that?


I don't think Marilyn Monroe was any different.  She once was little miss Norma Jeane Moretenson.  I'm sure Norma Jean had the same kind of insecurities everyone does.  But I think when she decided to change her name, it was her way of shedding her insecurities and all those ideas of who she could be.  And she became Marilyn Monroe.


So what I am suggesting, is we should all change our names!  I really think doing so will give each of us he confidence to just be who we want to be and we will all become icons!




Ok, not for reals.  But I think I want to start trying to shed my Norma Jean, and I want to shed those thoughts that I am never what I want to be.  I want to shed the desire to continuously picture who I could be if I were ten pounds lighter, or if my skin were clearer, or my teeth whiter, or my lady lumps more... lumpy... (Say shed one more time...)


So as of today I suggest we really start trying to break that habit.  The Norma Jean effect, if you will.  I'm not saying that there was anything wrong with Marilyn as Norma Jean, and I do understand that he life was never quite fulfilled, but I do admire her for taking things into her own hands and making no apologies for who she was.


So I am going to try to start finding ways to stop picturing who I could be, and start really loving what I am.  And when I find those ways, bet your bottom dollar I'll be relaying them back to you.


What are ways that you are going to find your inner Marilyn?