Are sexy women suicidal?

Kayden Kross

She stood out like a 'Candle in the Wind' and flickered only a moment before dying out. For 36-year-old Marilyn Monroe, death came like a caressing whisper in the quiet of the night, leaving behind a blurred portrait of the effervescent woman that once was.

Minka Kelly

Memories of Marilyn's mysterious death rushed back when in a recent interview yesteryear supermodel, Brigitte Bardot revealed, "I've been on the verge of suicide several times – it's a miracle that I'm still alive", bringing to the fore the inexplicable relationship between success, beauty and self-annihilation. We explore why some women decide to give it all up in a flash when they have the world at their feet.

Back home, not too long ago, model Viveka Babajee's family and friends woke up to a rude shock, that of her suicide. Some years back model Kuljeet Randhawa too ended her life in a fit, with best friend, supermodel Nafisa Joseph following in her footsteps a year later. The trend makes one wonder if early success gets too hot to handle? Says marriage and relationship expert Dr Kamal Khurana, "A beautiful and successful woman has many admirers, and hence many experimentation with relationships. A spate of broken relationships is enough to do the damage. She begins to feel companionless in a world that worships her façade, even if she is hurt and bewildered."

Marilyn had once said, "I knew 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." Curiously all successful women who committed or attempted suicide have one thing in common, an acute internal suffering - a feverish desire to be 'delivered'.

A failed suicide attempt landed American poet and novelist, Sylvia Plath in the hospital, which she described as a 'white landscape' of death in the confessional poem 'Tulips'. According to Plath, the red tulips her husband got her mocked at her from the bedside with their brightness like 'an awful baby', and upset the sheer white that lay all around her. It is believed that the 20th century novelist was prescribed anti-depressants a few days before her death, but Plath finally succeeded in her third attempt to 'attain a different form'.

Avers Dr Khurana that the intent of suicide takes birth long before. "It is pre-ordained and never incidental. When a successful woman searches for the same kind of success in her personal life and is disappointed, she tries in vain to overpower that feeling by trying to harm herself. Suicide is an attempt to gain control over death which she never had in her life."

Perhaps Korean superstar Kim Dual was mindful of her impending suicide when she posted on her blog, "Oh but how lonely it is. Then and now" along with the song by Jim Rivers, I go deep, few days before she was found hanging from the ceiling of her flat in Paris. A regular at Paris Fashion Week and one of the most sought-after faces on fashion magazines like Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, Kim left the world reeling from the news of her suicide.

But what makes a successful woman so weak that she resorts to suicide or is it a way of telling the world, 'look what you have drive me to'. Says Miss India World 2008 Simran Kaur Mundi, "Extremely successful women find it difficult to identify a true friend from a fair-weather friend. Besides, being at the top can make you insecure as you have to live up to a certain image and perform come what may. People who are emotionally strong are the ones that survive." But Simran also feels that personal relationships play a big role and is capable of crushing your identity. "Guys are intimidated by successful women, and feel they are too unreal to be friends with," says she.

Depression is a greater demon than just the agony of a failed relationship. It creeps in and stays on until recognized, but it is too late by then. Who would have known that Virginia Woolf, the famous author of Mrs Dalloway, would one day put on an overcoat, fill her pockets with stones and walk into a river and drown herself. Since childhood she suffered bouts of depression, but couldn't overcome it all over again at the onset of World War II.

"Depression is an illness," believes Advaita Kala, the author of Almost Single, "It is like the common cold of the mind that needs to be recognised and cured. As a society we are all heading towards depression as you'll hardly see kids go out to the park and play or call friends over for a birthday party. Social get-togethers have given way to social networking, leaving us melancholy most of the time and the mind prone to idle thoughts."

Marilyn was suffering, she felt she was "a child who nobody wanted, a lonely girl with a dream – who awakened to find that dream come true". "It's tricky," says Advaita, "as you can hardly tell if a person is suffering deep within. But once detected it needs to be treated and not brushed under the rug."