&lt;div class=&quot;track&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/28414?ns=guardian&amp;pageName=The+myth+of+Marilyn%3AArticle%3A1646420&amp;ch=Life+and+style&amp;c3=Obs&amp;c4=Marilyn+Monroe+%28Film%29&amp;c5=Not+commercially+useful&amp;c6=Eva+Wiseman&amp;c7=11-Oct-16&amp;c8=1646420&amp;c9=Article&amp;c10=Comment&amp;c11=Life+and+style&amp;c13=The+Eva+Wiseman+column+%28series%29&amp;c25=&amp;c30=content&amp;h2=GU%2FLife+and+style%2FMarilyn+Monroe&quot; width=&quot;1&quot; height=&quot;1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p class=&quot;standfirst&quot;&gt;Marilyn Monroe has been a tortured, wiggle-hipped sex symbol for half a century &ndash; and still the biopics keep coming. Isn&#039;t it time we let her go?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Aged 17, with glandular fever turning my skin into a&amp;nbsp;three-bar fire, I&amp;nbsp;accidentally overdosed a&amp;nbsp;little on painkillers. Instead of taking two every four hours, I started taking four every two hours. Amazing pills, illegal now, they were fluorescent pink, like matte-effect diamonds, and in the middle of&amp;nbsp;the night they made me hallucinate vividly. As I lay there, throat like a barrel, Marilyn Monroe stepped out of the Andy Warhol print on my bedroom wall and began to wiggle towards me, one tiny foot in front of the other, click click click. I was delighted &ndash; I&amp;nbsp;had so much to ask her. When she crawled into bed, I&amp;nbsp;think I&amp;nbsp;giggled. We spooned, but not for long, because quite quickly, snuggled next to me, she began to die. I remember the promise of Monroe, who (when I was a teenager, swollen thick with kissing disease) I&amp;nbsp;was fascinated by: she seemed the prototype for womanliness.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Little has changed. This week, the trailer was released for &lt;em&gt;My Week With Marilyn&lt;/em&gt;, the latest Monroe biopic, this one starring Michelle Williams with ever-parted lips and blue-blonde hair. But now I feel that with every retelling, every time the wig is dusted off, every time the bra is sharpened, her life becomes fainter, like we&#039;re photocopying a&amp;nbsp;photocopy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Williams is one of few female Hollywood stars who, until now, hasn&#039;t discussed her affinity with Monroe &ndash; Madonna, Anna Nicole Smith, Lindsay Lohan (&quot;People in their mind have created who I am and act as if there is no real person inside of me,&quot; Lohan smugged once, &quot;just like Marilyn&quot;) &ndash; all boast noisily of their similarities to the actress, pulling wildly on her fine chains of sex and sadness. The myth of Marilyn washes over our culture like a&amp;nbsp;Hipstamatic app &ndash; this bleached, beached tragedy; a woman too feminine to live; a wiggle-hipped symbol of objectification &ndash; but it&#039;s one that has been raked over so many times it ceases to have any impact.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is our continued obsession with Monroe (yet another biopic comes out next year featuring Naomi Watts) simply a glossy form of suicide porn, a&amp;nbsp;dark attraction to the idea of a&amp;nbsp;woman who gave in to her emotions? Partly, too, it must be nostalgia &ndash; not just for those acceptable curves and lipstick, but for her assumed naivety. There&#039;ll never be another celebrity ingenue. Today everybody knows everything. The &lt;em&gt;TOWIE&lt;/em&gt; stars, &lt;em&gt;Big Brother&lt;/em&gt; housemates, &lt;em&gt;X&amp;nbsp;Factor &lt;/em&gt;contestants &ndash; all are literate in fame, cynical to the point of boredom. Where Marilyn&#039;s skill was to appear turned on all the time, today&#039;s starlets have learned to look like they&#039;re ready to please.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;She died just before modern feminism took hold &ndash; is part of Hollywood&#039;s Marilyn obsession a&amp;nbsp;hungriness for that pre-liberated age? Or an elevation of her to martyr status? A symbol that when you let the world turn you into a sex object, you cease to exist. It&#039;s a &quot;She died so we could live.&quot; I like to think this is what my painkillers were trying to tell me.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;These discussions have been stretched gummily to snapping point. Is it not time to let Marilyn rest now? Surely there&#039;s another culturally weighty coffin to rifle through, another story to be told. It feels time. And while American &lt;em&gt;Vogue&lt;/em&gt;&#039;s cover star is Michelle Williams in full Marilyn bodysuit, in the tabloids there&#039;s a hint that the rest of us are moving on. This week Megan Fox (stamped &quot;Sexiest woman in the world&quot; by &lt;em&gt;FHM&lt;/em&gt;) was photographed in California, walking back from lunch in flip-flops and a&amp;nbsp;baseball cap. On her right forearm a shadow is visible &ndash; her Marilyn Monroe tattoo, which she began laser treatment to remove earlier this year, is almost gone. &quot;I got the tattoo as a&amp;nbsp;warning,&quot; she once explained, &quot;to not let myself be treated so badly by the film industry that it breaks me down.&quot; The tattoo looked like a fan sketch; now all that&#039;s there are a&amp;nbsp;few pale lines, a&amp;nbsp;gentle swoosh where a blonde curl once was, the faded suggestion of two cattish eyes. In a month they&#039;ll be gone.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;related&quot; style=&quot;float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;&quot;&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/marilynmonroe&quot;&gt;Marilyn Monroe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;author&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/evawiseman&quot;&gt;Eva Wiseman&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;terms&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk&quot;&gt;guardian.co.uk&lt;/a&gt; &amp;copy; 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our &lt;a href=&quot;http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html&quot;&gt;Terms &amp; Conditions&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds&quot;&gt;More Feeds&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;clear:both&quot; /&gt;