Story at a glance:
- Marilyn Monroe statue was already there from 2012 to 2014.
- The return of the statue is a problem because the skirt can easily be upskirted by children exhibiting at a nearby museum.
- A petition to get the statue removed has 40,000 signatures on Change.com.
A 26-foot-tall, stainless steel and aluminum sculpture of Marilyn Monroe will be returning to Palm Springs, Calif., permanently.
The sculpture called “Forever Marilyn,” which was in the downtown area from 2012 to 2014, is coming back after seven years.
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Ironically, the sculpture itself depicts Monroe from her iconic movie “The Seven Year Itch” — the movie where the actress wore a white dress as she stood on a subway grate, NPR reported.
While some people are delighted to have such a cultural art demonstration returning to the area, with it potentially driving tourism during an economic downturn, other people are concerned that the sex icon’s floaty dress presents an opportunity for people to “upskirt” the statue based on the then-28-year-old.
“She’s literally going to be mooning the museum,” Elizabeth Armstrong, a spokesperson for a Change.org petition called “Stop the misogynist #MeTooMarilyn statue in Palm Springs,” which states the statue is objectifying her.
“It’s blatantly sexist,” Armstrong told NPR. “It forces people almost to upskirt.”
It is worth noting that Armstrong was the director of the Palm Springs Art Museum, which the statue’s’ backside is mooning.
The current director, Louis Grachos, is also against the statue, telling the council “kids leaving our museum and having the first thing they see is the undergarments and underwear of this enormous Marilyn sculpture would be highly offensive.”
The petition has more than 40,000 signatures.
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