Pagan Martyrology

                    The 1961 Oscars were still being broadcast in black and white. A week later, a gorgeous full-color photo of Taylor regally seated at the Oscars party appeared on the cover of Life magazine. Her white cigarette holder was elegantly raised above a full champagne glass near a bottle of Dom Perignon resting on ice. The billowing white skirt of her floral-embellished Christian Dior dress was barely glimpsed. We saw only her starkly simple, pale yellow bodice that seemed to be channeling the golden glow of the Oscar statuette, which was offering her its adoration from amid a burst of red tulips, matching her full, crimson lips…

                    The Life cover also revealed a strange perversity: austerely presenting herself without necklace or brooch, Taylor seemed to be wearing the vertical, white tracheotomy scar on her throat as a fashion accessory. It was a tour de force of ambiguous eroticism, like a Catholic saint’s statue of a martyr flaunting her wounds.

Camille Paglia
The Hollywood Reporter
(2017)