Was Marilyn Monroe a plus-sized beauty? An average dame? A svelte sphinx who's been a posthumous victim of vanity size deflation? Like the Bible and the Nazis, she's become a rhetorical gambit that can seemingly be twisted to support any argument. The argument has been further confused by various celebrities' authoritative pronouncements. Liz Hurley made perhaps her most lasting contribution to the cultural lexicon when she notoriously declared to Allure, "I've always thought Marilyn Monroe looked fabulous, but I'd kill myself if I was that fat...I went to see her clothes in the exhibition, and I wanted to take a tape measure and measure what her hips were. (laughter) She was very big." Roseanne, for her part, stated in '96 that, "I'm more sexy than Pamela Lee or whoever else they've got out there these days. Marilyn Monroe was a size 16. That says it all."

Okay, first of all, when folks toss around the "Size 16" thing, yes, that's a British 16, by which they mean a U.S. Size 12. (Although it should be said that some have made the claim for the U.S. 16, too.) Then too, this doesn't even make a lot of sense, because most of Marilyn's clothes, and certainly her costumes, like those of any star of the era, would have been custom-made. And as anyone who's seen her films knows, her weight shifted a lot, so any "Marilyn Monroe was X size" statement is, stopped clock-style, probably going to be accurate at some point.

But if people demand numbers? They're certainly out there. According to measurements from Marilyn Monroe's dressmaker:
Height: 5 feet, 5½ inches
Weight: 118-140 pounds
Bust: 35-37 inches
Waist: 22-23 inches
Hips: 35-36 inches
Bra size: 36D

In other words, whatever her size, her figure was an unusually dramatic hour-glass, which makes it kind of strange for women to compare themselves to her anyway. When a collector displayed a bunch of her most famous costumes in London recently, "they had to get a special mold made for the corset and swimwear dummies in the exhibition because Monroe was such an extreme hourglass shape that no off-the-peg dummies existed in those measurements."

So, what size was she? Well, like most women, she wasn't one size everywhere. When British journalist Sara Buys had a chance to try on some of Marilyn's clothes earlier this year, she reported:

After all these years, mystery and conspiracy theories still surround her death, but when it comes to her physical attributes, I can put a few facts straight. Contrary to received wisdom, she was not a voluptuous size 16 – quite the opposite. While she was undeniably voluptuous – in possession of an ample bosom and a bottom that would look at home gyrating in a J-Lo video – for most of the early part of her career, she was a size 8 and even in her plumper stages, was no more than a 10. I can tell you this from experience because a few weeks ago, I tried to try on her clothes.

Okay, now we have to translate British sizes. (HuffPo, adding to the confusion, neglected to do this in their link headline from April.) Depending on the designer, a British 10 might translate as an 8, a 6, or even a 4. And vintage clothes of that era were cut slim, intended to be worn with serious girdles, so take this into account. The answer? There's no "exact" number. All we can know for sure is that Marilyn Monroe was a gorgeous, dramatically curvaceous woman with a physique heavier and curvier than that which is en vogue now.

The better question is, why do we care? To show the evolution of our aesthetic, certainly. And obviously, curvier women were the ideal - and whatever the verdict on Marilyn, stars like Jane Russell and Esther Williams were more voluptuous, larger-framed and more athletic than almost any we see on the screen today. But stars were always thin and urged by the studios to be thinner (see: Judy Garland.) Maybe part of the Marilyn fixation is what Buys gets at: with a figure so enigmatic, we want to pin down as many facts as we can. And what we're really talking about is not Marilyn Monroe's dress size: it's her sexiness. Marilyn Monroe was an icon, not of fashion, but of sexiness: a combination of her beauty, her obvious comfort with her physicality, her intelligence, and her vulnerability. Her dress size does not explain this, or give us a clue: she is iconic because she was unique, and no amount of arguing is going to change that.

It's not about proving whether Marilyn Monroe was "plus-sized" or not; obviously, plus-sized women can be beautiful and sexy, whether Marilyn belongs to the sorority or no. Can we make a resolution, please? Let's leave Marilyn Monroe out of the discussion from now on. She was a beautiful woman with an iconic body of work and a fanatical following, but her dress size - which fluctuated and had very little relation to the clothes and styles we wear today - has nothing to do with your size, my size, or that of anyone in Hollywood today. Comparing oneself to anyone is counterproductive, and in this case it's futile. Marilyn was someone who was comfortable with her body, and it's this that comes through. So let's follow her example - and leave the woman in peace.

Was Marilyn Monroe Really A Size 16? [Huffington Post]
Was Marilyn Monroe A Size 16? [London Times]
Downsizing Figures [Chicago Sun-Times]
With Respect to Roseanne [The New Yorker]
Marilyn Monroe Facts [Marilyn Monroe Pages]

1.) Rasputin**
The Russian mystic's disembodied penis is on display at the Russian museum of erotica in Saint Petersburg, in a tall jar, measuring 11 inches—flaccid.

2.) Liam Neeson
In her autobiography No Lifeguard on Duty, Janice Dickinson wrote of her ex-boyfriend Liam Neeson, saying he had "the biggest penis of any man alive. He unzipped his pants and an Evian bottle fell out."

3.) Jay-Z
Accounts from several different groupies say that Jigga is well endowed, "The biggest dick you will ever see in your life, but boring. Huge. Like a one-liter Pepsi bottle. What do you call those things? The 20-ounce bottle. It's beyond huge. It could block the sun."

4.) John Holmes
Even though he had one of the most celebrated dicks in porn history, due to its size, there's no real documentation of his measurement. His manager claimed he was 13.5 inches, but Holmes' first wife said he measured it in front of her, before he started doing adult films, and it was 10 inches.

5.) Vincent Gallo
Have you ever seen Brown Bunny? (Link NSFW)

6.) Milton Berle
This rumor about how large his dick was has been around for a while, and at his Friars Club memorial in 2002, his friends joked about his size.

7.) Wilt Chamberlain
His nickname was "Big Dipper." He claims to have gotten a lot of use out of it.

8.) Tommy Lee
Thanks to the sex tape with then-wife Pamela Anderson, everyone has seen Tommy's peen. It's guesstimated to be about 8 inches, erect. (Link NSFW)

9.) Frank Sinatra
Ava Gardner once said of her ex-husband, "He only weighs 120, but 100 pounds is cock."

10.) Alexis Arquette
Some years before her sex reassignment surgery, Alexis had a lot of taping to do. (Link NSFW)

10.) President Johnson
"He was a lifelong exhibitionist who in college had dubbed his penis ‘Jumbo.'"

11.) Errol Flynn
He was notorious for his cock, which he once used to play the piano. A classical pianist!

12.) James Woods
That's the rumor, anyway, but we don't really care to find out definitively.

13.) Colin Farrell
It looks like a baby's arm. (Link NSFW)

14.) Peter Andre
Glamor model Jordan aka Katie Price says that her husband's penis is the size of a large television remote control.

15.) Anthony Keides
The girls on Metal Sludge—a site where groupies compare notes on the rock stars they've fucked—say the Red Hot Chili Peppers front man is a "very large" penis that is "beyond gorgeous."

16.) Tony Kanal
The girls on Metal Sludge also say that the No Doubt bassist—who is Gwen Stefani's ex—measures about 10 inches.

17.) Tony Danza
He's uncut and long. (Link NSFW)

18.) Ray J
Don't all guys with sex tapes that "leak" have big dicks? (Link NSFW)

19.) Dan Rather
The report on Rather is that "he is as hung as he is handsome and intelligent."

20.) Simon Rex
It's no wonder why he used to do porno.

P.S. Here's a preview of Hung:

*It is the personal opinion of the writer that big penises hurt.
**This list is not compiled by size order.

Before we made the video, I had accepted that it would be less than flattering, but I thought that it would be more empowering than soul crushing. I thought it would be saying a big fuck you to the celebrity-sartorial complex which requires everyone to be a size 0. I thought I could quell my vanity to make a point that I felt strongly about. It turns out, not so much! In the weeks that have elapsed since the we put up the video, I've been more self-conscious about my size than ever. Lemme tell you: Having thousands of internet trolls write about how gross you are — even when you've already likened yourself to a "fat hooker" — does a number on the old self-esteem. And I'm not the only one — Tracie felt similarly. She was only less upset than I was because she had prepared herself to be "devastated" before the video went up, whereas I thought that I could handle it.

I read the comments you readers write. Every time an issue comes up relating to weight on the site, everyone rushes to post her measurements. Even anonymous internet commenters feel the need to somehow prove they're not fat. I thought about doing that after the video, but I realized that would be destroying all the things I hoped to stand for by making it in the first place And yes, I realize how shallow and ultimately useless it is to obsess about your weight, and every time I think about how much time I've wasted hating myself for my unwaiflike proportions I hate myself even more.

The way we scrutinize our own bodies — and others' bodies as well — is almost impossible for some of us to get beyond, no matter how hard we try to will ourselves beyond it. I don't have any solutions. Maybe someday I'll be able to pull a stunt like that and be invigorated instead of cowed into size-submission. But for now I'm settling for never, ever seeing myself in a gold lamé tube dress ever again.

Real Naked Ladies [The New Yorker]
Fifty Nude Women [Fifty Nude Women Official Website]

Earlier: American Apparel Will Make You Look Like A Fat Hooker

The Spice Girls Talk About Cavalli [IHT]

It all comes down to a concept called PSFM — Perfect Size For Me. I can't take credit for it — I heard about it from a friend — but Perfect Size For Me is the idea that everyone has a "size". It's not always the ideal frame, either. Some people love huge booties. Others go gaga over small breasts. Some folks are into some chunk, and yet others like a butt rug. People finding lots of different things attractive is what makes the world go 'round.

On the other hand, lots of men just want a skinny girlfriend as a trophy because society deems female thinness aspirational. I know there are legions of men (and women!) who criticize their partners' weight and that's never okay. Do you think men who want only thin women are misogynistic pricks, or are they just practicing PSFM?

Disappearing Knightley[NY Post]

But there's plenty you can experience on the site for free, like the test, "How well does my vagina measure up?" In the interest of science, I got out a ruler and a makeshift dipstick in order to determine the length of my vagina, the width of its opening, and the length of my "erected clitoris."

I'm no stranger to putting my labia to work for this site. And though I'm not exactly sure if I measured everything correctly (there were no instructions on how to do so), after I completed the test, these are the results I got:

The quality of your vulva is of 77.5 points. Based on the answers that you have provided, your Vulva and Vagina is [sic] of average quality.

The Vagina Institute
'Honey! Your Vagina Needs A Mint' [The F-Word]
Earlier: Pimp My Vadge

Speeding Australian men cut down to size [Telegraph]
Earlier: Dude-Drivers Down Under: Wild And Maybe Not So Well-Hung?