From Marilyn Monroe to Millennials: The Enduring Allure of Words

Nothing is as potent, nor as stirring, as the way words are chosen, spoken, and carried into the world.

I have always been drawn to Marilyn Monroe. In her mystique, in her beauty, she embodied the very meaning of allure. She was more than an image on a screen — she became a language of her own. And when I read Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman, I hear that same cadence of power and grace, a rhythm that belongs to every woman who knows her worth:

“It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my steps,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman, phenomenally.
Phenomenal Woman,
That’s me.”
— Maya Angelou, Phenomenal Woman

For those of us who came of age as baby boomers, knowledge was something we searched out in libraries, thick encyclopedias, and card catalogs. Our discoveries were bounded by geography, by how far we could travel, and by the time it took to dig through pages. Learning was slow, deliberate, and often exhaustive.

Now we live in a world of instant exchange. From IBM mainframes to today’s app-driven life, the pendulum has swung. Information doesn’t wait — it flashes in real time. Our pulse is wired to the urgency of updates. What Einstein once described in theories of relativity feels almost quaint beside the speed at which ideas now travel.

With iPhones, Androids, and tablets in the hands of everyone from toddlers to elders, we’re told the Information Age is robbing us of intimacy. Maybe it is. Face-to-face conversations shrink while screens multiply. Words themselves are reshaped — compressed into acronyms and emojis, shorthand that sometimes says too much and sometimes not nearly enough. WTF, TY, YW, LOL — little codes that carry our tone, our humor, or our care, depending on the day.

Millennials, born into new media and raised through its constant glow, have pioneered this virtual culture. They might text beside each other instead of talking, and yet they’ve also engineered a world where words travel farther and faster than ever. Their invention — this vast web of interactive platforms — has made it possible for ideas to circulate in ways that are, in their own way, democratic.

Perhaps this is a renaissance. Perhaps the screen is not the death of conversation but its rebirth. Because in the end, imagery commands our attention, but it is still words that carry our meaning. And words, when used with intention, still have the power to connect, to invite, to educate, and to endure.

— Grace