“I was shocked into the realization that I myself had played an unwitting role as a movie star and sex symbol in perpetrating the stereotypes that affected women all over the world.”
Jane Fonda
Female sex symbols have been starring in the fantasies of men halfway around the world for over a century, yet they have undergone a radical change since the term was first coined in 1911.
Here are 25 curious facts about some of them that might surprise you.
1. Farrah Fawcett
Farrah Fawcett did her own hair and makeup and wore her own bathing suit for the photo shoot that produced the best-selling poster of all time.
In addition, Fawcett made an agreement that she could choose the final image and nothing else from the shoot would be used.
2. Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor literally saved Montgomery Clift’s life after he was in a car accident. Kevin McCarthy, who was driving in front of Clift and ran to him directly after the accident, said that “Clift’s face was torn, he was a bloody pulp. I thought he was dead. McCarthy ran for help, which included Elizabeth Taylor.
Rumor has it that afterwards, Taylor told the photographers who arrived that she knew them all personally and that if they took a single photo of Clift, it would ruin their careers.
3. Rihanna
Rihanna, one of the best-selling singers in history, never had any vocal training until she was recording her third album.
He said, “I’ve never had vocal training, so when I’m in the studio, [Ne-Yo] tells me how to breathe and stuff. And I’m like, ‘What? ‘ Like he says these big fancy words, ‘Okay, I want you to do staccato.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, I don’t know what that is.'”
4. Kathleen Turner
Kathleen Turner has been president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Board of Advocates.
In 2002, Turner said, “Reproductive choice is a fundamental issue of the day. It’s a basic right: the right of when to have a child….. We are a country that stands for freedom. Right now we are fighting a war to defend that freedom. Without the right to reproductive choice, we are liars.”
5. Cameron Diaz
Cameron Diaz sued a photographer who tried to blackmail her with topless photos from a shoot they did when she was 19, and won.
In 2003, 11 years after the photos were taken, photographer John Rutter offered Diaz the photos in exchange for $3,500,000, saying he would sell them to others if she did not accept the deal. Diaz filed a civil suit against him. Rutter was eventually convicted of forgery, attempted theft and perjury. Diaz did not attend his sentencing.
6. Lena Horne
When MGM pulled Lena Horne from its World War II USO tour after she filed a complaint with the NAACP because black American soldiers had to sit in the back of the audience behind German POWs, Horne financed her own tour so she could entertain black troops.
On one occasion, when black soldiers were not allowed to attend a USO concert, Horne stayed and performed a second, different show exclusively for them.
7. Priyanka Chopra Jonas
Priyanka Chopra Jonas worked with Bumble as a “partner, advisor and investor” to bring the company to India.
Bumble co-founder Whitney Wolfe Herd said of Chopra Jonas: “She’s our partner in this. Priyanka has invested in it. She’s been on every phone call. She’s actively evolved.”
8. Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe sat next to Jane Fonda in Lee Strasberg’s acting classes.
Fonda said: “She and I would sit in the back of the room, and she was … She wasn’t wearing makeup, she was wearing dark glasses and a scarf around her head, and she looked very scared, and apparently she was always too scared to get up and do anything. And I felt that way too; I was too scared to get up and do anything.”
9. Paris Hilton
Since 2014, Paris Hilton sometimes earns more than $1,000,000 for a DJ set.
Hilton said, “I’m working a lot as a DJ and I’m getting paid really well and I’m having a great time. … I don’t want to brag, but it’s great to be paid well for what you love to do.
10. Jean Harlow
Jean Harlow spent six months in 1934 writing a novel called Today Is Tonight, but it was not published until 1965, 28 years after her death.
When “Today is Tonight” was published, at least one news outlet claimed at the time that Harlow wrote the book with the “technical assistance” of screenwriter Carey Wilson.
11. Brooke Shields
Brooke Shields gave up her acting and modeling career to attend Princeton. She majored in Romance Languages and Literatures, focusing on French literature, and graduated with honors in 1987.
Her senior thesis was entitled “Initiation: From Innocence to Experience: The Preteen/Adolescent Journey in the Films of Louis Malle, ‘Pretty Baby’ and ‘Lacombe, Lucien'”. A 12-year-old Shields starred in Pretty Baby.
12. Dorothy Dandridge
Dorothy Dandridge was the first black woman to be nominated for an Oscar for best actress for her role in the musical “Carmen Jones”. The ceremony took place in 1955.
The film was so successful that it not only won Best Musical Film at the Golden Globes, but also won an Audience Award at the Berlin Film Festival.
13. Salma Hayek
During a UNICEF trip to Sierra Leone, Salma Hayek Pinault breastfed a baby whose mother could not produce milk.
Salma later said of the moment, “This 15-year-old girl is sobbing and shaking with a newborn baby, and she said, ‘Please help me. I need milk. We had a lot of things, but we had no milk, except I remembered I had milk because I was weaning my daughter. I just weaned my daughter from breastfeeding not too long ago, and I said, ‘I have milk…..’ I sat down and breastfed this baby.”
14. Donna Summer
Donna Summer’s first performance was in church at the age of 10. The priest knew from her parents that Summer loved to sing, so he asked her to sing, not knowing he was about to hear such a voice.
Summer later said of that moment, “I started crying, everyone else started crying. It was an incredible moment in my life, and at some point, after I heard my voice, I felt God say to me, ‘Donna, you’re going to be very, very famous. And I just knew that from that day on I was going to be famous.”
15. Madonna
Madonna was interviewed by Carrie Fisher for the eighth of her 23 Rolling Stone covers, the most of any female artist.
In one paragraph, Fisher wrote: “Madonna has a quality I’ve always enjoyed in some people, mostly public ones: She’s willing to answer any question because she’s genuinely interested in her own answer. A conversation or an interview, then, can become an opportunity for self-discovery, or simply discovery. It is a mixture of self-awareness and self-confidence.”
16. Pam Grier
Pam Grier had this to say about her sex symbol status, pronounced very casually, “They kept saying, ‘Oh, she’s so pretty, she’s so sexy,’ because I was thin.”
Grier also said, “Because I was thin I became this brand, this very successful brand.”
17. Lucy Liu
Lucy Liu has been a UNICEF ambassador for 18 years.
In 2008, Liu won the Danny Kaye Humanitarian Award, “in recognition of her continued dedication and service on behalf of the world’s most vulnerable children”.
18. Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was openly bisexual, and allegedly slept with Anna May Wong, Claudette Colbert, Greta Garbo and other famous actresses.
Dietrich referred to the woman he slept with as his “Sewing Circle”.
19. Kim Kardashian
Skims, the shapewear line Kim Kardashian co-founded, was worth $3.2 billion in January 2022.
Kardashian remains Skims’ largest shareholder, and she and Jens Grede, her business partner, control a majority stake in the company. Kardashian’s current net worth is estimated at $1.8 billion.
20. Jane Russell
Jane Russell was to wear a bra designed by Howard Hughes in the 1943 film, The Outlaw.
Rumors paint the bra as a push-up prototype. “The legend has made it sound like she’s trying to design some kind of dynamic aerospace thing,” stated Christina Rice, author of Mean, Moody, Magnificent: Jane Russell and the Marketing of a Hollywood Legend. But according to Jane, he just wanted to make something that was seamless, so that underneath his clothes it wouldn’t look like he was wearing a bra.
21. Lana Turner
Lana Turner’s abusive boyfriend was murdered by her teenage daughter, and it never went to trial because it was deemed “justifiable homicide”. Turner’s daughter, Cheryl Crane, testified, “Mom came in and said, ‘I’m going to ask John to leave. I don’t want you to come downstairs, but if you hear us arguing, that’s what it’s all about.'”
When Crane heard John Stompanato Jr. threaten to disfigure Turner and destroy his family, “I ran downstairs to the kitchen. I don’t know what I was looking for, but I found a knife. I ran back upstairs, the door burst open, and he literally ran to the knife.”
22. Eartha Kitt
Legendary singer and actress Eartha Kitt allegedly had a threesome with James Dean and Paul Newman.
Kitt said of the quote, “White boys are so delicious.”
23. Tyra Banks
Tyra Banks was the first black woman to appear alone on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, the first black woman on the cover of the Victoria’s Secret catalog and the first black model and woman to appear on the cover of GQ.
In 2019, at 45, Banks also became the oldest woman to grace the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
24. Betty Grable
At the time, Betty Grable’s legs were insured for a million dollars.
This probably coincided with Grable being the highest-grossing star of 1943, the highest-paid actress in Hollywood, and the highest-paid woman in America.
25. Julie Christie
Sixties fashion icon Julie Christie said years later, “Even in the sixties, especially then, I was always deeply anxious. I never felt I was cool enough, or dressed well enough.” “Nonsense. I was afraid. I did everything you do; not that I didn’t try a lot of things. But I could never get rid of that anxiety all the time.”
