A century after her birth, Marilyn Monroe is being seen in a new light — not as the troubled starlet of Hollywood lore, but as a woman quietly suffering from a debilitating and largely misunderstood disease.
End of the Cycle, a new documentary featuring Amy Schumer, Julianne Hough and others, makes the case that Monroe's long-misread public persona — her absences, her multiple miscarriages and her reputation for being "difficult" — were all likely symptoms of endometriosis, Page Six reported Wednesday, June 3.
"The way she's been portrayed all these years has not been accurate," co-director Sammy Jaye said at the screening at New York City's Whitby Hotel, per the report. "If anyone mentions Marilyn Monroe in a negative way, you can revert back to this and know that she was going through [the disease] at a time when she couldn't have said anything, and there wasn't social media."
According to the outlet, Jaye, who also lives with endometriosis, noted that Monday marked what would have been Monroe's 100th birthday, adding, "You look at what has and hasn't changed over the past 100 years with treatments and medicines … not much has changed."
According to the Endometriosis Collective, a global nonprofit research organization, more than 265 million women worldwide are affected by the condition, which causes tissue similar to the uterine lining to grow outside the uterus, resulting in intense, chronic pain. The disease has no cure and cannot be diagnosed without surgery. On average, women wait 7 to 14 years to receive a diagnosis, and more than 30 percent of those with endometriosis experience infertility.