Cancel culture is going after a Palm Springs Marilyn Monroe statue.
While some people are delighted to have such cultural art returning to the Palm Springs, Calif., with it potentially driving tourism during an economic downturn, other people are concerned that the sex icon’s buoyant dress presents an opportunity for people to upskirt the statue.
Elizabeth Armstrong, previously the director of the Palm Springs Art Museum, is seeking removal of the 26-foot high artwork based on its visible undergarments.
Detractors agree saying that the return of the statue to Palm Springs is a problem because children can easily see up Marilyn's skirt.
"It's blatantly sexist," Armstrong told NPR, "It forces people almost to upskirt."
“Upskirting” is a modern term used to describe the secret recording of an image (usually by cell phone camera) of another person's private parts or undergarments, often shot surreptitiously up the skirt of an unsuspecting woman in a public place.
The current art museum director, Louis Grachos, agrees, telling the town council “kids leaving our museum and having the first thing they see is the undergarments and underwear of this enormous Marilyn sculpture would be highly offensive.”
"She's literally going to be mooning the museum," Armstrong said, who is a spokesperson for the Change.org petition called “Stop the Misogynist” #MeTooMarilyn statue in Palm Springs, which web page states the statue is “objectifying her.”
The sculpture depicts Monroe in a famous scene from her iconic movie “The Seven Year Itch” – the movie where the actress wore a white dress as she stood on a subway grate while the train below created an uplift of air raising her dress while she quickly attempted to push it back down, NPR reported.
The 26-foot-tall, stainless steel and aluminum sculpture of Marilyn Monroe called "Forever Marilyn," which was in the downtown Palm Springs area from 2012 to 2014, is coming back to the city after a seven-year hiatus.
"She makes [the] majority of the people very happy," Aftab Dada says, reported NPR.
Dada is a managing director at the Palm Springs Hilton and the head of Palm Springs Resorts, the hospitality organization that's decided "Forever Marilyn's" forever home will be the Coachella Valley.
"The photos taken, and being transmitted all over the world, will do nothing but benefit the city of Palm Springs," Dada says.
Armstrong’s petition to get the statue removed has about 41,000 signatures on Change.org.
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