Society
Cristina Odone compares Myra to Marilyn
Published 25 November 2002
The strange ways in which Myra Hindley resembled Marilyn Monroe
Myra Hindley, murderer: born Manchester, 23 July 1942; died Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, 15 November 2002. The obituaries poured forth, trying to convey the significance of the years in between that birth and death. Perhaps the most arresting line emerged from Terence Morris in the Independent: Myra's photograph as a brassy, befringed blonde, staring glassy-eyed into space, was "as instantly recognisable as the shot of Marilyn Monroe over the airduct".
The Marilyn comparison is apt. Both women were part of a mythology that generated not so much reverence and awe as fanatical obsession - hero-worshipping Marilyn, demonising Myra. It was a fixation shared by the lowest common denominator in society - a mob curiosity that took up, and then destroyed, both women. Every detail of their lives - what they wore and read, whom they slept with and whom they talked to - absorbed their followers: it was as if in these details lay the clues to their extraordinary selves. Clues that were avidly picked over: for both women's lives provided cautionary tales. Heed the warnings, lest you follow in their footsteps and allow a warped dream machine such as Hollywood or a sinister Svengali-like Ian Brady to take over your life and corrupt your soul. Marilyn the slag, Myra the murderer were regarded as morally bankrupt: Eves incapable of resisting serpents, weak women who had given in to temptation - destroying others and themselves in the process.
The fascination with the two blondes held fast until death. Neither could change in any way: Marilyn was cast in her sex goddess role and Myra in her heartless murderer role. No one could allow Marilyn to become a serious actress, a faithful wife (or a president's mistress); no one could allow Myra true repentance or a fight for her freedom.
Both women had to occupy their fixed positions in the collective consciousness. Both fulfilled a role for society: we needed a vulnerable sex goddess, a woman who showed, with every step she took, that woman could not survive without a good man beside her; and we needed a symbol of evil, someone who showed the worst humanity was capable of. Not even death could release them from their onerous duties. And eventually we shall find two new blondes to replace them.
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