ABSTRACT
Building off the previous chapter, this chapter argues that Disney and Playboy are not, in fact, far removed from one another when it comes to exploiting female celebrity. Starting with a discussion of sexuality, critical whiteness studies, and post-feminism, the author analyzes how the figure of Marilyn Monroe “haunts” contemporary female celebrity and invokes a nostalgic longing for classic Hollywood women, despite the consistencies between her narrative and the “trainwreck” stories of young women like Lindsay Lohan and Anna Nicole Smith. The chapter delves deeper into each of these women’s public trajectories, comparing the former Disney star’s Monroe-inspired New York Magazine spread from 2008 (and the reaction to it) to the Playmate and Guess model’s “descent” into reality television fame before her untimely death in 2007. The analysis demonstrates that the anxieties surrounding the girl star’s burgeoning sexuality do not go away once she is an adult, but, rather, transform into an anxiety about improper sexuality or a sexuality that is always on the verge of being lost to age, weight gain, and “trashy” public spectacles.
