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Why do I still have a Facebook? It’s not for meeting new people, since if you add someone you haven’t hung out with in person already, you’re a “creeper.” It’s not for my friends’ witty status updates, since they only post to inform of me their daily itinerary. It’s not for memes because they originate on 4chan and they don’t pop up on Facebook until months later. I suppose I keep my Facebook because it’s the one service that everyone has, even though I have more fun on Twitter or Reddit. The funny thing is, I have a Facebook to stay in touch with everyone, but everyone is making it really difficult to not hate them.

I can ignore the incorrect use of outdated memes. My brain doesn’t even notice the terribly vague status updates you guys shit out every five minutes (three recent examples include: “i cant handle this. Ahhhhhahah,” “Pish posh,” and just “….”). I haven’t even developed a brain tumor from the fact that you’ve all managed to take social networking and transmogrify it into a vessel for your social isolation. There’s just one trend I don’t understand: Why the fuck do I keep seeing Marilyn Monroe on my news feed?

“She’s dead, Jim.”

For some reason, the women in my age group (and some older ones because papa likes his cougars) have turned to Marilyn Monroe as a role model. Jesus fucking Christ, why? I understand the appeal of dead celebrities, but that doesn’t mean they have anything of worth to tell us decades after their deaths. Let’s examine the two most popular Marilyn Monroe-isms I keep seeing in my poor news feed, starting with a quote:

I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.

I would rather cut my skull off, surgically extract my brain, and punt it across a football field during elementary school gym class than try to contemplate how the women who post this un-ironically interpret this quote. Here’s a translation in case the overwhelming amount of stupid bullshit emanating from this quote is too much for you to bear: “I have a lot of deep character flaws that I’m going to list in rapid succession. I have no intention of working on fixing them, even though I just acknowledged that they’re flaws. If you can’t handle me when I’m an irrational, angry, fuck-up, then you don’t deserve to see me when I’m on enough Prozac to barely keep myself from falling apart in public.”

What kind of message does this send to people? Shouldn’t we want to remedy our character flaws? If you found someone worth keeping in your life, shouldn’t you want to better yourself for their sake in addition to yours? Socrates is vomiting blood in the grave out of disgust. This whole idea of every woman being a “catch” these days is fucking hilarious. Ladies, there might be a million guys, but there’s a million of you, too. I’d rather not pursue someone who looks up to a woman who was a whorish mistress and died from a drug overdose when she was only 36, but I’ve been told I’m too picky.

The first quote is a poor excuse for women to justify shitty behavior without having any sort of real backing argument, but what about the next bit? Will it also be some absurd justification of poor lifestyle choices? Wait for it:

WRONG AGAIN. I’m not sure if this image is all that bad on its own, but it’s the fact that only fat chicks post this on Facebook is what’s grinding my gears. This quote is actually fairly reasonable, considering I have no respect for Monroe, but society isn’t at fault here. According to the CDC, approximately 1/3 of American adults are obese. These already-large women should worry less about crusading against the fashion industry and spend more time doing any sort of exercise. I understand that eating disorders are very dangerous in our society, and I’m not trying to ignore that, but being fat is also pretty dangerous, and being on either side of the spectrum is bad.

And what of Monroe herself? The people who quote her like to think of her as being representative of a time when curvy women were appreciated, and to them, “curvy” is synonymous with “5’3” and 180 lbs.” The general consensus seems to be that Monroe had a 23” waist. Let’s play a little game called “How big is your waist?” If it’s larger than 23”, then you’re no Monroe. I don’t want women to read this as “Mike only likes anorexic model-types.” Nope, fuck that. Ask any guy and they’ll all tell you that look is disgusting. We’d all prefer a woman with some T and some A, but there’s a difference between that and this. If you’re fat and you use the above quote as a means of justifying the fact that you have to wear long sleeves to the beach, then you’re in denial. I’m not that comfortable with my own body either, but I owned up and now I’m trying to do something about it. I respect everyone I see at the gym, from the larger people to weaklings like me, but I don’t respect people who try to act like an unhealthy lifestyle is something to be proud of.

What have we learned from this meticulous analysis of some dead lady’s quotes? I learned that Marilyn Monroe doling out life advice is only slightly less ironic than James Dean doing a PSA on driving safely. I learned that Facebook sucks but not enough for me to delete mine. That being said, I’m going to post this on Facebook, you’ll post more Monroe quotes, and the shitty circle of life will continue until fate shines upon us and somebody initiates a murder-suicide.