Saturday night I watched the new movie “My Week with Marilyn,” and, after it was over, had a hankering to watch a real Marilyn Monroe movie. “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” was the one I could find in my Netflix instant queue.

It was a good choice. Not the kind of film I usually watch, foreign or independent, deep and ponderous. This was silly and frothy and fun. Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell strut their stuff, shake their ample bottoms and seem so strikingly different from today’s stick-thin beauties as to be another gender entirely.

It made me think about how seriously we take ourselves these days — and how that wasn’t always the case. Once you could sing “diamonds are a girl’s best friend” and not be taken to task for your retrograde lack of feminism or support of corrupt African warlords. There I go again, romanticizing the past. It’s a nasty habit, I know.

Photo: Wikipedia from “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” screenshot