Audrey Hepburn Core Post 3

While watching “Funny Face” I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” specifically between Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. Both considered icons of their generations, these two women could not be more different. Marilyn is blonde, thick, curvy and oozing sexuality while Audrey is brunette, thin, flat and cute. But somehow they both became beauty and fashion icons. In William A. Brown’s piece Audrey Hepburn The Film Star as Event, he describes how stardom and fashion tie in with cinema. He explains “Marjorie Rosen might see the 1950s as dominated by the ‘Mammary Woman,’ as typified by Marylyn Monroe and Jane Russell, but in opposition to the mammarians, Rosen also sees the rise of the waif” (Page 33). The waif includes women like Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly.  According to the dictionary, a waif is “a homeless and helpless person, esp. a neglected or abandoned child: she is foster-mother to various waifs and strays” (Websters dictionary). Rosen defines this waif type of star as ‘continental’, but going by the dictionary definition of the term, this seems odd. She puts a positive spin on the term. After further reading, Brown further explains Rosen’s stance by stating that “in these films, Hepburn emerges as having and ambiguous nationality. White various audiences (American, Dutch, British) laid claim to her as “theirs”, other commentators have seen Hepburn as being neither American nor European” (Page 34). This idea that she belongs to everyone is what attributed to her star power and separated her from the rest of the girls. While Monroe pulled people in because of her dominant, sexual presence, Hepburn was appealing because everyone felt like they could see some of themselves in her and that she was approachable and relatable. 

Even though Hepburn was hailed as more relatable, he was still a fashion icon. She was most known for wearing Givenchy, but her “fans like to mimic the Audrey style in order to assert their own individuality, a paradoxical individuality, since it is inspired by Hepburn—together with Givenchy and, perhaps, Paramount costume designer Edith Head, and an individuality that can been seen as a response to social pressure but which also offers a rapprochement between the individual and her social role” (Brown). Audrey was a star in her own right and a fashion icon. Her ability to maintain her status in the film and fashion world and maintain her relatable nature is what kept her relevant and a huge star. She displays a different form of femininity than Marilyn Monroe, but she’s the ‘every-girl’. Beautiful and genuine.