Image 6
Linda Smogor, (b. 1954)
Deva and Her Beach Towel, 2008
Inkjet print
Collection of the Anchorage Museum, 2008.54.3
Linda Smogor’s black-and-white portrait shows a young girl draped in a towel emblazoned with Marilyn Monroe’s face. Young women receive conscious and subconscious messages about how to look, dress, and behave from advertisements, social media, television, and movies. Monroe herself struggled with the way she was commodified, famously saying, “Hollywood is place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.”