Poster Child

Marilyn by Ms. Pink

Did you have posters in your room growing up? From the age of about 11, I was absolutely obsessed with Marilyn Monroe and I had posters of her on every wall. I even had a 6-foot tall door-sized shot of her from The Seven Year Itch with her skirt blowing up over her head.

I collected books about her and filled several photo albums with postcards and glossy 8x10s that I bought at the Pike Place Market Golden Age Collectibles in Seattle. She had already been dead for decades by that time, so it never ceased to amaze me that we never seemed to run out of new pictures of her.

I used to spend hours drawing Marilyn. I would sketch her all day when I was bored in class. She has one of the most iconic faces that can be rendered with just a few shorthand features, a swoop of hair, a pointy eyebrow, perfect red lips and the famous beauty mark.

Decades later, when I was going to Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School every month, one of the models came dressed as Marilyn. I had almost forgotten how much I used to love drawing her. The piece at the top of this article came out of that session, along with many other fun sketches.

If I was growing up now obsessed with Marilyn, in the age of AI and deep fakes, I’d probably have tons of pictures of her covered in tattoos or cuddling with James Dean, two things that never happened in real life.

But then, I might never have bothered to learn how to draw her, and that would be a tragedy.

AI image of Marilyn in a grunge band

Of course, Marilyn wasn’t my only obsession as a tween. I had lots of wall space to cover, after all. I loved Prince, Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Heart and INXS. I had posters of them, but also tons of pictures cut out from magazines and pinned all over the walls.

My best friend and I used to perform Heart songs at lip synch contests, complete with an inflatable keyboard and a guitar my step-dad helped me craft out of cardboard and scrap plywood. I painted it black and added strings made of fishing line. It was very cool.

Obviously, covering your room with posters is a huge part of identity formation in our youth. Movies we liked, bands we listened to, sports teams we followed and our favorite players making sick shots, cute animals, aspirational travel locations, random hunks and hotties.

Of course, growing up in the 1980s, I went through a somewhat ill-advised Patrick Nagel phase. I also loved the art of Syd Brak, whose name I never knew until yesterday and whose art is arguably even more 80s than Patrick Nagel.

Later on, when my tastes became a little more refined, I started collecting comics as well as books and posters by my favorite artists, including classic fantasy painters like Boris Vallejo, Frank Frazetta, Chris Achillios and Michael Parkes. I also loved modern-day pinup artists like Olivia, who was a huge influence on my own style.

Being a pre-teen girl is about a lot of things and one of those things is judging a book by its cover, or a movie by its poster, as the case may be.

We used to see a lot of movies as a family, and we also rented a ton of videos. I was always begging my parents to let me rent the most pretentious garbage based solely on the sexy cover art.

Last Chance. Slam Dance

The 80s and 90s were the heyday of the “sexual thriller” and all it took to win me over was a movie poster like the one for Slam Dance, a utterly unwatchable Tom Hulce movie from 1987 that has a well-deserved 17% on Rotten Tomatoes.

But it featured the stunning Virginia Madsen and I was obsessed with her long, corkscrew curly blonde hair.

I would love to say Slam Dance was the only terrible movie I saw because Virginia Madsen looked hot on the cover, but I’d be lying. There was also Gotham, The Hot Spot, Electric Dreams and the dreadfully stupid Fire with Fire, costarring Craig Sheffer, who is arguably the male Virginia Madsen.

But I stand by my love of the poster for Slam Dance. I swear it holds up. That is a perfect movie poster.

Some of my favorite films of the 80s are still in my top 10 of all time, including Aliens, Blade Runner, The Terminator and The Princess Bride.

And the 80s were kind of a golden age for movie posters. A lot of them were still illustrated back then, like the classic Blade Runner poster from 1982 and of course Heavy Metal, a poster so perfect it’s almost better than the uneven animated classic it advertised.

There’s not a lot of substance to this deep dive into bedroom posters of the past, but in my defence, I’ve been sick all week! I wouldn’t go so far as to say the posters you had in your room as a teenager or tween say a lot about you, but I do think it’s fun to reminisce.

I asked my best friend earlier this week what posters she had as a kid and she claims she can’t remember (“some rock bands”). A likely story!

What about you, dear readers?

Do you remember what posters you surrounded yourself with? What did you hope they said about you? What strengths did you secretly hope would be imparted to you through osmosis as you stared at them every day? Beauty? Sex appeal? Musical talent? Sports prowess? Super powers? Talk about it in the comments!