Irish Comedian Asks Help to Buy Marilyn Monroe’s X-Rays. She Wants Them Destroyed: ‘Drop Me a DM’

Six decades after the death of Marilyn Monroe, the world hasn’t lost its fascination with her. People yearn to collect pieces of her. Celebrities covet locks of her hair, and some men expressed wanting to be buried beside her grave. It’s obsession at its finest, and Irish comedian Anna Mac (@mac_attack_comic) put an auction house on blast after they announced that the late actress’ x-rays will be up for bidding.

“I need someone with a lot of disposable cash to help me buy Marilyn Monroe’s X-rays at auction so I can destroy them,” Anna told TikTok. It’s alarming that a deceased person’s x-rays can be listed for auction. What Anna says next makes the situation even worse.

There are many Marilyn Monroe items up for auction in different houses because her 100th birthday is coming up. Anna said that Julien’s Auctions is the company that will be selling Marilyn’s x-rays to the highest bidder.

“But not just any x-rays,” Anna prefaced. “It’s x-rays of her pelvic floor and chest.”

What makes matters worse is that there are already bids on both of those intimate X-rays. Marilyn’s pelvic floor scans have already had ten bids, the highest being $1,250. Her chest x-ray, on the other hand, has fifteen bids, with the current bid at $2,250. Disturbingly, Marilyn’s x-rays aren’t the only intimate documents being sold at the auction. According to Anna, other medical documents are also listed up for grabs.

Objectifying Marilyn Monroe

“Anything that could have ever belonged to Marilyn has already been auctioned off, be it items of clothing or earrings,” Anna said. “It feels like we’ve reached a particularly shitty inflection point of capitalism if we’re auctioning a woman’s private medical data.”

Anna called on those who are interested in buying Marilyn’s x-rays to coordinate with her. She said, “Drop me a DM.” Whether she was joking or not is debatable, since she is a comedian. But given her tone, it’s difficult to imagine that she was.

The intention to objectify doesn’t even hide itself in this instance. Marilyn has long passed, but from a moral vantage point, that doesn’t give collectors a free pass to pry into the most intimate details of her life and body. TikTok was just as disturbed as Anna when they found out about the peculiar auction item.

One commenter wrote, “Why can’t people just leave the poor woman alone?”

Others were tagging Lady Gaga—the singer is a well-known fan and looks to Marilyn as an inspiration. TikTok users were hoping she could put a stop to the auction’s madness.

But it appears that TikTok doesn’t need Lady Gaga to swoop in to save Marilyn Monroe’s X-rays. The auction house has removed the item from its lot. It’s unclear if the items have been sold, but they most likely aren’t, as bidding is still ongoing for the rest of the lot.

Is it normal to auction dead people’s medical records?

The short answer is no, it’s unusual for celebrity medical documents to be auctioned off. However, it’s not illegal to do so, because medical documents lose HIPAA protection fifty years after the deceased has passed away. But just because it isn’t illegal doesn’t mean it’s unethical.

People just couldn’t stop digging Marilyn’s grave to grab pieces of her for themselves. But it’s been six decades since her death—it’s time for people to leave her to rest.

(featured images: Ivan S, mac_attack_comic, Stephen Leonardi)

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