Public Intimacy: The Prior History of ‘It’

Abstract

There is a certain quality, easy to perceive but hard to define, possessed by abnormally interesting people. Call it ‘it’. For the sake of clarity, let ‘it’, as a pronoun aspiring to the condition of a noun, be capitalised hereafter, except where it appears in its ordinary pronominal role. Most of us immediately assume that ‘It’ has to do with sex, and we’re right, but mainly because everything has to do with sex. Most of us also think that ‘It’ necessarily entails glamour, and so it does, but not for long. Most of us think that ‘It’ is rare, and it is quite, even to the point of seeming magical, but ‘It’ is also everywhere to be seen. In fact, however elusive this quality may be in the flesh, some version of it will, at any given moment, fall within our direct view or easy reach as a mass-circulation image; and if not, a worthy substitute will quickly come to mind, even to the minds of those who, commendably, want to resist generalisations like these, along with the pervasive imposition of the icons they describe.

I belonged to the Public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.

Marilyn Monroe