A sex symbol is a heavy load to carry when one is tired, hurt and bewildered.

Wikiquote lists this sentence among sayings misattributed to Monroe and identifies Clara Bow. The Toronto Film Society’s notes, posted 31 October 2013 for a screening held 3 December 2012, report it as Bow’s comment on Monroe’s death; a ClassicFlix essay dated 10 June 2014 likewise credits Bow. Neither page identifies an original letter, interview, or newspaper printing, and none was inspected here: the Bow attribution is supported by these secondary accounts, not a newly authenticated 1962 document. The earliest Monroe credit actually inspected in this run is a modified wording in a public blog post dated 19 October 2010. That is evidence of the miscredit by 2010, not a claim to have located its first occurrence. An earlier newspaper lead could not be opened and is not used to date the saying.

1. 19 October 2010Earliest found · credited to Marilyn MonroeThe earliest Monroe attribution inspected in this run is a modified version in the public post Marilyn Monroe: Not Just the Girl with the Shape; no source is supplied for the quotation.Hourglass Symposium, Marilyn Monroe: Not Just the Girl with the Shape, 19 October 2010, in the blog’s 2010 archive. Checked in a full-text transcription. Source
2. 31 October 2013Credited to Clara BowThe Toronto Film Society publishes notes crediting the sentence to Clara Bow in sympathy with Monroe after her death; the notes were prepared for a screening on 3 December 2012.Toronto Film Society, What Price Hollywood? (1932), film notes, posted 31 October 2013 for the 3 December 2012 screening. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source
3. 10 June 2014Spread · credited to Clara BowClassicFlix repeats the wording as a comment attributed to Clara Bow after Monroe’s death.ClassicFlix, Pre-Code Obsession: Clara Bow — Life As the ‘It’ Girl, 10 June 2014. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source

The sentence circulates as Monroe’s description of her own fame. The Toronto Film Society’s notes on What Price Hollywood? instead report it as Clara Bow’s sympathetic comment after Monroe’s death, and a ClassicFlix essay also gives the same attribution. Monroe’s genuine Meryman interview contains a different objection to being made into a sexual emblem; that line already has its own atlas entry.

Being treated as a sexual emblem can become an exhausting public role for someone who is already suffering.

It is not established as Monroe’s first-person account of her own feelings. The sources checked credit Clara Bow, commenting about Monroe, rather than Monroe herself.

• A misquotationBeing a sex symbol is a heavy load to carry, especially when one is tired, hurt and bewildered. Presented among Monroe’s quotations in the post Marilyn Monroe: Not Just the Girl with the Shape, 19 October 2010. The added opening and intensifier differ from the wording credited to Bow in the film-society notes. Where it was seen

Suffering, Pain, Emotions

• That’s the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing.
• Experience that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn. (misattributed) C. S. Lewis
• But when you’re famous you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way.
• The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up. Chuck Palahniuk
• Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid. (not found) Fyodor Dostoevsky

• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marilyn_Monroe#Misattributed
• torontofilmsociety.com/film-notes/price-hollywood-1932
• classicflix.com/blog/2014/06/10/pre-code-obsession-clara-bow-life-as-the-it-girl

“A sex symbol is a heavy load to carry when one is tired, hurt and bewildered.” Attributed to Marilyn Monroe. No. The sources checked credit this remark to Clara Bow, speaking about Marilyn Monroe, not to Monroe herself. The original Bow document has not been inspected here. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/a-sex-symbol-is-a-heavy-load-to-carry/ (checked 26 October 2026).

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