In Their Shadows, I Find My Outline

I choose these women—not to present myself as their equal—but because I draw strength from their stories. Because I recognize the soft ache beneath their grandeur. Because they were all—at one time or another—trapped in the very gaze that claimed to love them.

 There’s a photo on the cover of the New York Magazine. Lindsay Lohan in 2008 recreating Marilyn's last "nude" photo. A look in her eyes that can only be defined as “alluring,” though if you stop and really look, is it closer to panic?

When the world sees this photo, she is viewed as desirable. But is that look betraying her cage? Why do we find fragility so appealing?

This is what it means to be wanted more than you are understood. To be offered admiration in place of care.

Marilyn Monroe

She was used by the most powerful men in the world—Presidents, producers, husbands, handlers. They passed her around like she was an inside joke they were all in on. We call her iconic, but what we mean is we remember the way she made us feel, not the way she felt. She was brilliant, you know. Not just sexy.

But the world doesn't like its sex symbols to speak too loudly. So, she was silenced by objectification and slowly undone by isolation. She died alone, the very thing she feared most, after being everything the world ever claimed it wanted. What did she get in return? A legacy, sure. But not a place to rest.

Audrey Hepburn

Why didn't her marriages last?

The world adored her. She was luminous—not just pretty, but kind, perceptive, deeply human. And perhaps that was the problem. Her husbands were drawn to the light and then grew to resent the way others basked in it. It’s likely they couldn’t reconcile that the woman who made them feel so special could make everyone feel seen.

She gave. She always gave. Until she quietly left. Not broken but unwilling to shrink. She never stopped loving, even after she left.

Sisi, Empress of Austria

An empress, and yet never free. She was chosen for her beauty, perhaps for the softness her sister lacked—but it was her sorrow that gave her depth. Did the Emperor resented how his people adored her? Like Audrey, her glow was a threat, not a gift. She grieved often, traveled constantly, and wrote obsessively.

We remember her as a romantic figure. But romance, for Sisi, was a form of escape. Her tragedy wasn’t just the crown—it was that her crown fit only when she was far from the throne.

Cleopatra

She has been reduced to a seductress, but hers was a mind sharp enough to rival any general. She spoke multiple languages. She played politics like chess. But even a queen needs a reprieve.

By some synchronicity—fate, luck, or longing—she found not one but two men she desired: first Caesar, then Antony. Both were power moves. But perhaps both were real.

Did she use them? Yes.

Did they use her? Certainly.

But I think she wanted them—and not just as allies. She had lovers she chose. She died on her own terms.

But the price of being both clever and captivating is that the world is always trying to simplify you. Why does history still refuse to see the glory of her complexity?

Queen Elizabeth I

The Virgin Queen, they called her—as if abstinence were her defining trait. But perhaps it wasn’t about purity at all. Perhaps she did long for partnership. Perhaps she even loved. But to marry meant compromising her independence. To marry meant handing over part of her sovereignty, or at the very least, pretending to take someone else's lead.

She refused. Her success as a monarch was not despite her solitude—it was likely because of it. She outmaneuvered kings, councils, and centuries of doubt. Her tragedy is that loneliness may have shadowed her victories. To be loved by a nation is not the same as being held in the dark.

Princess Diana

She was forced into a fairy tale and told to be grateful. Crowned in youth, adored by the public, photographed endlessly—and yet, the more we watched, the less They saw.

Her kindness wasn’t performance. It was her rebellion. She reached for causes, for people, for connection—because she needed saving too.

The royal gaze wanted her polished, pliant, picturesque.

But she bled real, spoke plainly, and walked into crowds with open arms.

She was neither trying to hoard nor to escape the spotlight. She was simply surviving inside it.

What does it feel like to be so broadly desired?

It’s not the high-gloss fantasy the world wants it to be. It’s isolation. It’s pressure. It’s having your softness misunderstood as weakness and your power treated like a provocation. It’s knowing you are remembered for what others projected onto you—not what you offered freely.

What does it take to stand beside such women?

The willingness to look at them—really look. To see beyond the symbol and into the substance. To honor their complexities without shrinking from them.

To lend your power to her power—not to contain it, not to claim it, but to join with it. To offer strength without control. Devotion without demand. To let love flow out of you so it may merge with the love flowing out of her. And to do that, without possessing it, is the most radical form of flirtation.

I choose them. Not because I wish to become their reflection. But because in their shadows, I find my outline.

Because in their shadows, I find my outline.