"Your candle burned out long before/Your legend ever did." Those words form Elton John's song 'Candle in the Wind' sum up Marilyn Monroe, born 100 years ago, dead at 36, and forever iconic. The breathy voice, the beauty mole, the blonde bouffant, everything about Monroe was memorable, and it is no wonder that she continues to be the subject of movies, books and conspiracy theories linking her to President John F Kennedy so many years later.

She may have played to type on screen, pretending to be the dumb blonde, but Marliyn Monroe did not become famous by accident, It took grit and graft before she did. She knew the power of the image, both in photos and film, and spent much time learning method acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute, becoming a producer, and controlling the way she would be projected. Even now, her perfect smile and baby voice make her characters unforgettable, whether it was the diamond digger Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953); or the loveable laughgetter of The Seven Year Itch (1955), which gave the world the iconic visual of Monroe in a white dress blowing all around her; or showgirl Sugar Kane in Some Like it Hot (1959).

You could argue that Monroe infantilised women, but she also weaponised her sexuality to her advantage. In 1952 when her nude photos taken in 1949 threatened her rising stardom, she collaborated with a journalist to control the narrative and out the story herself, saying she was "broke and hungry" when she posed for the nudes. The catalogue for a new exhibition of Marilyn Monroe at the National Portrait Gallery in London reveals more, saying she not only performed, but also directed and claimed the right to veto any images she did not like. "Richard Avedon, Milton Greene and Bert Stern might have held the camera, but Monroe was instrumental in guiding it," says the catalogue.

Which brings me to the current controversy around Janhvi Kapoor's tasteless portrayal in the Ram Charan starrer Peddi this week. Janhvi's scenes in the movie are almost exclusively focused on her anatomy and to add to it, she is denied the dignity of consent. When she protests against Peddi kissing her forcibly, he replies that he does not know anything except physical touch to express intimacy. She relents and kisses him back.

This is not unusual for a certain kind of cinema that celebrates coercive touch, whether it is the waist pinch of Kantara or the paid kiss in Pushpa or even the demand in Animal that the girlfriend lick the hero's boots. Surely one thinks that Janhvi Kapoor, the daughter of a producer and an actor, knew what she was being asked to do by the director. More than that, as an experienced actor, she must be aware of camera angles.

But now comes news that Janhvi is unhappy at being objectified in Peddi, which makes one wonder what she was thinking when she shot it. Is it fear of being replaced or second thoughts? It throws open the question: that in an industry which continues to sexualise women, there need to be guardrails. Just as intimacy coordinators are now increasingly being hired on sets, to prevent the kind of instances which happened with Rekha in Do Shikaari in 1969 and Madhuri Dixit in Dayavan in 1988, actors should now demand a say in the final cut. Apparently, Janhvi had objected to the way she was depicted in the film, only to be ignored.

It's time for women to write it into their contracts. Deepika Padukone demanded the dignity of an eight-hour workday from Bollywood. Perhaps it is time for Janhvi Kapoor to insist on a final cut approval. If Marilyn Monroe could insist on taking ownership of her image more than 60 years ago, surely a Generation Z woman with 26.6 million followers on Instagram who has also acted in an empowering movie such as Neeraj Ghaywan's Homebound can do the same.

Otherwise she and many other women will be continue to be condemned to navel gazing in movies that worship the hero.