Doug said:
Do I think she WAS beautiful, yeah, actually, she looked very pretty in an era before airbrushing and photoshop.
EDIT: Fixed
Interesting, but of those four pictures, three are airbrushed, one of them quite crudely (bottom one, look at the shape of her chest and the way the light falls on it relative to the rest of her body, especially the areas getting light from the same direction, I had a lecture involving that exact photo not long ago). They absolutely used to edit pictures to remove imperfections, it's just cheaper and easier now.
Anywayse...
I think Ms Monroe was a very nice looking woman, but I think she represents the beginning of a slippery slope too. She's pretty much the prototype of the multi talented stars/starlets that Disney churns out today. Other people picked her looks, her work and even her hair colour, body and name. All the iconography and glamour surrounding her is a product other people made to make money out of her, which bothers me.
She is unique in so far as she is the first and the icon, but whenever I see her all I can think is that her success is responsible for Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus.
There might have been a beautiful woman in there somewhere, but to me she's the start of human beings as product lines.