This silly-ass article claiming to blow the lid off the “myth of zaftig Marilyn” really bugged the hell out of me. For starters, Marylin WAS a size 12. VINTAGE size 12. As someone who wears a lot of vintage clothing, I can tell you that fake modern vanity sizing has nothing to do with vintage sizes. I wear a vintage 8 or 10, depending on the brand. It’s an excepted rule of thumb that you need to subtract 6 from a vintage size to get the equivalent modern size. I’d say that number you subtract should be closer 8 or even 10 now. I wore a size 5 in high school (the smallest size available at the time) and now I wear a 0. I haven’t lost weight. If anything I’ve gained 5 pounds! So you’re already starting your article off on the wrong foot. Yes it’s true that she was definitely not plus sized and would not have fit into a modern size 12, but she was still much curvier than modern stick-insect actresses.
Which brings me to the other thing that bugged me about that article. The crowing about waist size. You are measuring clothes that were worn in movies! Anyone who’s ever seen a Marilyn Monroe film can see that she was girdled or corseted within an inch of her life in some of those films. That was the classic 50’s hourglass silhouette. I’m willing to bet she didn’t have a natural 22 inch waist. Especially considering that I have a 24 inch waist and can corset to 18 inches. It would make no sense to measure one of my extreme fetish outfits after I’m dead and try to claim I had an 18 inch waist. I also have a 32 inch bust, two inches smaller that Marilyn’s “modest” 34 inches. Anybody want to claim I have a small chest?
Small ribs maybe. And how about hip size? I think Marilyn’s hips might have been just a wee bit bigger than, say, Mary Kate Olsen’s. Certainly bigger than mine.
Okay, end of rant. I now return you to your regularly scheduled morning.