Marilyn Monroe’s Surprising Style Type
Did Marilyn Monroe’s signature pose trick us into thinking she’s purely Romantic Ingenue?
That’s what she’s usually typed as—but those aren’t her only essences.
In photos, Monroe typically posed like this:
Above, her face seems rounded, which is characteristic of Romantic Ingenue—but look at the angle of her chin. Is that a natural pose? Do most people walk around in everyday life with their chin tilted up that high?
Probably not.
Below, she’s photographed straight on, showing what her face actually looked like:
"Última sesión fotográfica con Marilyn Monroe, por Bert Stern" by Antonio Marín Segovia is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Comparing Photo 1 and 2, a striking difference emerges. In Photo 1, the unnaturally high angle of Monroe’s chin makes her jaw appear round, characteristic of Romantic or Ingenue.
But when she’s photographed straight on in Photo 2, we see that her signature chin-tilted pose camouflaged her angular jaw and her probable Dramatic.
Why Marilyn Monroe has the Dramatic essence
Monroe’s angular bone structure is a clue to her real style type—and observing her in flattering makeup and fashion confirms she has Dramatic.
Monroe often incorporated Dramatic elements in her makeup, like thick, matte winged liner and contour applied in straight lines:
These makeup elements flatter her face because they harmonize with her Dramatic style essence.
This makeup wouldn’t be harmonious on a pure Romantic Ingenue—Romantic Ingenues are flattered by extremely soft, blended makeup, free of harsh, straight lines.
Dramatic faces tend to appear elongated and narrow at the jaw and chin, as seen on Monroe above. With her characteristic, chin-held-high pose, she made her face appear overall shorter and wider—masking her Dramatic essence.
What fashion flattered Marilyn Monroe?
And to my eye, Monroe is just as beautiful, and actually more harmonious, when comparing her face to Dramatic Romantic style (left) versus Ingenue Romantic style (right):
When photographed from straight on, Marilyn Monroe is flattered by both Dramatic and Ingenue fashion, as well as Romantic. All three are significant essences for her.
What do Romantic Ingenue faces with no yang essence look like?
To further understand why Monroe has Dramatic, we can compare her to one of the few celebrities I’ve verified who has significant Romantic and Ingenue with no yang essence—Ingrid Bergman, a Romantic Ingenue Classic:
When Bergman is photographed straight on, her jaw forms a rounded shape—compare it to Monroe’s much more angular bone structure above.
Like Monroe, Bergman has glamorous Romantic and sweet Ingenue, but unlike Monroe, Bergman has no meaningful amount of Dramatic angularity.
Why did Marilyn Monroe do her signature pose?
Part of why people think Marilyn Monroe has only Romantic and Ingenue is that this was what she wanted.
Monroe (and/or the people who managed her image) worked to create a sensual-yet-innocent persona. By frequently being photographed with her chin at an angle that obscures her intimidating bone structure, Monroe made herself appear more approachable.
She also reduced her face’s intimidating quality by often smiling and laughing in photos, again changing the shape of her face and obscuring its Dramatic essence. (Smiles make faces appear wider and friendlier, so smiles can disguise narrow, serious Dramatic beauty.)
Here she combines a laugh with her signature chin-tilted-up pose.
It’s not just Monroe’s poses and facial expressions—it’s also her hair. Dramatics are most flattered by long, straight hair—the opposite of Monroe’s short curls. Her image appears designed to emphasize the more rounded aspects of her face and downplay the angular ones.
And because short curls don’t flatter Dramatic, another possibility emerges for why she was often photographed in her characteristic chin-tilted-up pose: given her curly hairstyle, she looked more harmonious when she obscured her Dramatic essence. She looked more harmonious when it was harder to see that her angular bone structure didn’t match her curly hair.
Does tilting your chin up make your face look more intimidating?
Some people might argue that sticking your chin out makes a face look more powerful and dominant. If so, then why would this pose make Monroe look less intimidating?
It’s a fair argument that Monroe’s signature pose might make her appear confident—we do hold our chins up to make ourselves seem proud and assertive. But even if you argue that overall it’s a confident pose, the fact is, the Dramatic face is defined by long, angular, narrow shapes. And Monroe’s characteristic pose makes her face look less long, less angular, and less narrow.
So, maybe the pose does overall make her look more intimidating—but regardless, it still obscures her Dramatic essence.
Does Marilyn Monroe’s signature pose make her look more intimidating?
Additionally, you can argue that only certain faces tend to look more intimidating with their chins tilted up.
For example, for someone with a very wide, prominent chin, tilting the head back and doing the Marilyn Monroe pose would theoretically increase intimidation, because it would accentuate the large, prominent shape of their bone structure.
So highly Natural faces may look more intimidating when they adopt the Marilyn Monroe pose, because Naturals tend to have wide jaws and chins.
But for someone like Monroe, whose chin appears to be relatively narrow, sticking out her chin masks the intimidating, angular narrowness of her Dramatic essence. This pose does make her face appear a bit wider than it naturally is, but not necessarily so wide as to make her appear intimidating—wide enough to make her face appear round, which tends to appear less intimidating than angularity.
So Naturals may tend to look more intimidating if they tilt their chin up, but Dramatics may tend to look more intimidating if they tilt their chin down, making their jaw look even narrower.
Additionally, Monroe’s signature pose seems to make her already small, short nose appear even smaller and shorter, and her already heavy-lidded eyes appear even more heavy-lidded—so it may emphasize her Romantic and Ingenue essences as well as downplaying her Dramatic.
So it’s a fair argument that Monroe’s chin-in-the-air pose makes her appear confident, but a person can appear confident without appearing intimidating.
And in my view, she looks more conventionally intimidating when photographed from straight on, when you can better see her sharp bone structure.
Does a similar phenomenon explain why Scarlett Johansson is mistyped?
We may see a similar phenomenon with many other celebrities, including Scarlett Johansson, who has also been typed by others as a Romantic Ingenue.
But based on my virtual draping, Ingenue isn’t a significant essence for Johansson. Instead, she’s Romantic Dramatic Gamine.
Here we see that the Marilyn Monroe pose, with her chin held high, makes Johansson’s face appear round:
But when she’s photographed from an angle that more accurately depicts her face, we see that her jaw has some angularity—it doesn’t seem as rounded as, say, Ingrid Bergman’s—and more importantly, that she’s flattered by a Romantic Dramatic Gamine dress:
Like Monroe, Johannson is also flattered by matte, severe, unblended Dramatic winged liner, as seen above.
But unlike Monroe, she’s not highly flattered by short Ingenue curls—even when she tilts her chin up to make her face appear rounder and less Dramatic:
Scarlett Johansson for Louis Vuitton.
She's beautiful here, but there's a disconnect between her face and hair.
Conclusion
Part of why it’s hard to type celebrities is that they’re often photographed from an angle or with their face in an expression that can markedly change the shapes of their features. This is true of Marilyn Monroe, Scarlett Johansson, and many others.
When Marilyn Monroe is photographed straight on, we see that she’s flattered by Dramatic makeup and styling—she has Romantic, Ingenue, and Dramatic as significant essences.
In analyzing faces, I aim to capture all a person’s essences, not just the ones that are most obvious or that most fit the stereotypes of what the essences are assumed to look like. I don’t have bias against any of the essences—I think all the essences are deeply beautiful—which permits me to be honest and say that most women, including celebrities and beauty icons, have significant yang essence.
I’ve also trained my eye to the point where I’m confident in my ability to type faces with smiling expressions and at unusual angles—though if you want me to be 100% confident in my typing, I’d suggest sending a straight-on photo with a neutral expression. As Marilyn shows, just a tilt of the head can create a very dramatic, and in her case, less dramatic change.
Summary
In Marilyn Monroe’s signature pose, she tilts her chin way up, making her pass for a Romantic Ingenue.
But in photos that depict what her face really looked like, we can see that she has an angular jaw—and that she’s flattered by Dramatic styling. Her style type is Romantic Dramatic Ingenue.
Failing to consider how celebrities look straight-on can produce inaccurate typing.
A similar phenomenon can be seen with Scarlett Johansson, who has been typed as Romantic Ingenue but is most flattered by Romantic Dramatic Gamine styling.
Marilyn Monroe, or the people responsible for managing her image, wanted to obscure her Dramatic essence—they wanted to make her look more approachable. And it seems they succeeded!
