Marilyn Monroe's gender role journey: Promoting women's development

Programming that fosters healthy conceptions of women's and men's gender role development is continuously needed on our college campuses. College student development professionals can create campus interventions that stimulate interest in gender roles and awareness of the negative aspects of personal and institutional sexism.

The "gender role journey" is a metaphor that provides a framework for encouraging men and women to evaluate how sexism and gender role conflict affects their lives. The gender role journey includes five phases of gender role development:

(a) Acceptance of traditional gender roles;

(b) Ambivalence about gender roles; (c) Anger;

(d) Activism; and (e) Celebration and integration of gender roles (O'Neil, 1995; O'Neil & Egan, 1992b; O'Neil, Egan, Owen, & Murry, 1993). As people move through these phases, they change their assumptions about gender roles, including the standards they hold for themselves and for others. The gender role journey involves a retrospective analysis of both past and present gender role transitions and conflicts. This retrospective analysis may include examining early family experiences with gender roles, an assessment of one's present situation with gender roles, or the creation of new perspectives on gender roles that promote personal change and activism. Ultimately, through this process, one becomes aware of how gender roles and sexism affect one's life personally, professionally, or politically.

This article describes a 90-minute outreach intervention designed to facilitate women's development using the gender role journey. The video intervention entitled "Marilyn Monroe's Gender Role Journey" was developed to stimulate positive interest in women's gender role issues. Marilyn Monroe's personal and gender role development are described using an introductory lecture and edited video clips from documentaries. The effects of the intervention were assessed using evaluation data collected immediately after the intervention and at the end of a one week period.

Marilyn Monroe's Gender Role Journey Marilyn Monroe's legacy lives on in American consciousness as a movie star, sex goddess, and American icon. Most of the books and documentaries about Marilyn Monroe fail to examine her personal, psychological, and career development as a woman. How Marilyn Monroe struggled with her gender role journey and how she coped with her gender role conflicts and gender role transitions have gone unexplored. Steinem (1986) contends that Marilyn Monroe's life is important because her life clearly demonstrates how sexism victimizes women.

We reviewed over 80 books and 10 video tapes documenting Marilyn Monroe's life. From these sources, we analyzed Marilyn Monroe's life using established definitions of gender role conflicts (O'Neil, Good, & Holmes, 1995), gender role transitions (O'Neil & Egan, 1992a); and the five phases of the gender role journey (O'Neil, 1995; O'Neil & Egan, 1992b). From this analysis, we created a biographical history and documented her gender role conflicts and transitions. The books and documentaries provided evidence of her struggle with gender roles and her experiences with both personal and institutional sexism. Marilyn Monroe's developmental history, gender role transitions, and gender role conflicts were made evident through edited clips from the documentaries. The edited tape included Marilyn Monroe's personal statements about her own development as well as what her friends and biographers have said. The 30 minute edited tape begins and ends with Elton John's music video "Candle in the Wind" which has become a metaphor for her life. The tape's goal is to summarize one woman's journey with her gender roles as a means of helping students evaluate their own journeys.

Method

Marilyn Monroe's gender role journey was presented in two undergraduate classes. Students were given definitions of sexism, gender role transitions, gender role conflict, and the phases of the gender role journey (O'Neil & Egan, 1992a, 1992b; O'Neil, Egan et al., 1993; O'Neil, Good et al., 1995). Students were asked to reflect on how women are victims of sexism and to assess their own gender role conflicts and transitions. Furthermore, a lecture on self-in-relation theory (Jordan, Kaplan, Miller, Stiver, & Surrey, 1991) was presented to stimulate interest in women's development. Finally, a biographical summary of Marilyn Monroe's life was presented. Four questions were posed to the students during the program including: (a) What was Marilyn Monroe's gender role journey like in the context of the five gender role journey phases?; (b) What were her actual gender role transitions and gender role conflicts?; (c) Which phase of the gender role journey do you most clearly identify with? (d) What are your past gender role transitions, and what are your current gender role conflicts? After the tape, comments, questions, and personal reactions were discussed by the class in the context of the above questions.