Marilyn Monroe Statue Causes Outrage in Palm Springs for Racy Reason

Palm Springs is facing a bit of a predicament. NPR reports that a giant Marilyn Monroe statue known as “Forever Marilyn” is taking up permanent residence in the California town, and not everyone is pleased. The towering monument to an iconic moment from the film The Seven Year Itch, the statue was a temporary attraction from 2012 to 2014. The 26-foot-tall aluminum and stainless steel piece of pop art is going to become a permanent fixture of the Coachella Valley, and Aftab Dada, managing director at the Palm Springs Hilton and the head of PS Resorts, has been working tirelessly to ensure its spot.

“She makes [the] majority of the people very happy,” Dada explained. “The photos taken, and being transmitted all over the world, will do nothing but benefit the city of Palm Springs.” However, some people object to the slightly racy elements to the statue, like the fact that Monroe’s underwear can be seen as her skirt is flying up. The statue will go in front of the Palm Springs Art Museum, and Louis Grachos, the director of the Palm Springs Art Museum, is taking a stand against it despite the economic boom that the tourist attraction could inspire. “The thought of those 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,” Grachos told the council in November.

A Change.org petition was even started and has earned for than 40,000 signatures, claiming that the statue was offensive and disrespectful to Monroe. “She’s literally going to be mooning the museum,” Elizabeth Armstrong, a spokesperson the petition and a former director of the Palm Springs Art Museum, said. “It’s blatantly sexist,.It forces people almost to upskirt.” Additionally, the Committee to Relocate Marilyn, started by fashion designer Trina Turk, argues that the new location for the statue will be disruptive to local business from a city planning standpoint.

“We’re sticking to the street and highway code and the ways in which Palm Springs did not follow its own rules in the process of closing this street,” Turk told NPR. “Social media impressions don’t really pay the bills for someone who has a shop or a restaurant on Palm Canyon Drive. There’s no data.” In a response to these complaints, Dada claims that PS Resorts is “going to conduct [an] independent research study and notify the city what the economic impact and benefit she has been.”