Earlier this week my Sensei offered up a challenge to the black belts in his class. He tasked us with researching Marilyn Monroe, and then arriving at our own conclusions as to how her life and actions relate to our concept of fighting. This post is my attempt of summarizing my takeaways from the exercise. Challenge accepted, Sensei!
Lesson #1: She fought against abusive behaviour
Long before the #MeToo movement, Marilyn Monroe spoke up publicly about the physical and sexual abuse she experienced during her youth. You have to understand, this took place at a time when the prevailing societal belief was that abuse rarely occurred and, if it did, it was the victim’s fault. It took a ton of guts, and the act empowered other women all over the world to do the same.
In other words, Monroe fought against both her abusers and the stigma attached to abuse, when all of the advice around her was telling her to keep her mouth shut. That indomitable spirit would have served her equally well as a martial artist. The moral here is that sometimes the fight isn’t violent – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still a fight.
Lesson #2: She fought for equal rights
Renowned jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald was having trouble gaining access to sing at Hollywood nightclub Mocambo – turns out her skin wasn’t the right colour. When Marilyn Monroe learned this, she contacted the owner and insisted that Ella be allowed to sing there, promising that she would sit at the front of the audience every night Ella performed there.
That did the trick, and helped add another notch to the belt of black rights at a time when it wasn’t the prevailing mentality. In this case, Monroe fought for what was morally right, and she did it with style.
Lesson #3: She fought the workplace status quo
Did you know that Marilyn Monroe was only the second woman to head up her own production company? Yeah, me neither. But she was, and she set an example of female leadership that paved the way for hundreds of thousands of others to follow in the coming decades.
Sometimes, we need to fight conventional thinking to show people that there is another, better way of thinking. In this case, the conventional thinking was that women shouldn’t hold positions of leadership. Boy, did she ever show the public how wrong they were about that one.
Lesson #4: She fought against limiting beliefs
Marilyn Monroe has been quoted as saying “A wise girl knows her limits, a smart girl knows that she has none.” This is, once again, a combative position against prevailing thinking at the time which encouraged women not to “reach beyond her limits.”
Seeing the stupidity of that advice, she chose her words carefully, approaching the conventional advice indirectly, rather than head-on. She didn’t outright say that Women should reach beyond their limits; she said that they in fact should stay within them – just that those limits were nonexistent.
The lesson here is that sometimes you need to fight against what others tell you to believe about yourself. Other times, that fight is internal, against what you believe about yourself. The other takeaway is that you don’t always have to meet an adversary head-on. Sometimes the easiest way to deal with an opposing force is to move with it, or move against it indirectly.
Wrapping it Up
I see now why my Sensei holds Marilyn Monroe in such high regard. When you expand your definition of fighting to go beyond a physical confrontation, you begin to see that she was just as much of a fighter as any martial artist.
Her actions go even further than we first realize, though: they teach us that, as martial artists and individuals, the fight isn’t just about us, whether physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. Sometimes we need to fight for others, too.
