Norma Jeane Mortenson was born on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles, California. Her death cause is still an unknown one, even though there’re several hypotheses about it. Was found dead in her apartment on the morning of August 5, 1962. Since was a young girl, Norma Jeane had many troubles in her life. First of all her father’s identity always remained undetermined, that’s why later she was going to be baptized Norma Jeane Baker (adopting her mother’s last name). After many years using her original name she changed it to Marilyn Monroe. Recognized as the most famous woman of the 20th Century, Marilyn was known by millions of people because of her successful career. She worked most of her life modeling and as an actress. The aspect that is going to be worked here is specially her modeling and acting career which made her so famous and glamorous.

Marilyn has many recognized photographs because of many reasons. As was considered by everyone as the sexiest women on the world, Playboy magazine had her in a cover completely naked. However she didn’t just posed for the cameras waiting for a good picture to appear, she also acted in 30 different movies accomplishing different kind of roles. There’s one image specially that is known as Marilyn’s most famous moment and is in the movie “The Seven Year Itch” in a scene where her white dress is blown up. That’s exactly the image that is going to be analyzed here.

There’re two principal characteristics that can be analyzed here: color of the photograph and body position. The picture by itself has no subliminal messages or double senses; the viewer simply receives what it’s happening on the movie. So actually what everybody gets is the situation of a beautiful woman whose dress is being blown up by some steam that is coming from the underground.

In 1955 movies were already done with color. Obviously “The Seven Year Itch” wasn’t going to be the exception, so produced the whole movie with color scenes. However, in many occasions scenes of this movie are remembered just in black and white. Te question is why? It’s really simple: if the original image contains colors and someone wants to replace them for only black and white, means that they aren’t important because there’s a bigger idea behind. The color isn’t important in “Marilyn in White Dress” because the importance of it aren’t the details, is the message that transmits to the viewer. Therefore isn’t important if the picture is exposed with two colors or with millions, meanwhile keeps sending the same message to the spectator. A message that clearly has a sexual content but that at the same time demonstrates Marilyn professionalism.

The importance of the body expression is that she isn’t showing anything else that her legs but it is still considered as inappropriate by some radical points of view. Again Marilyn proves her professionalism because was able to create images that hardly another model can, transmitting feelings to her public without doing necessarily a naked photograph.

By this analyze we have seen how Marilyn Monroe with a simple picture send so many messages to the world population. Was so important, so glamorous, that had no frontiers on the world; everyone could know about her and her job without doing any effort. That’s why she is considered a beautiful, successful and talented person, but for many people she can hardly be considered a person, for many is considered a symbol.