It’s late November again and the airwaves are a-twitter with tales of Camelot and its Queen Jackie, the most beautiful woman who ever lived. Except I didn’t see it. Not when I was six in '60, not today, and at no point in the intervening years. Not beautiful, not pretty. Nope, she wasn’t even cute. Just a face of unappealing parts assembled haphazardly. And glamorous? Uncomfortable and uninteresting, with a fixed, artificial smile. I felt like the kid in The Emperor’s New Clothes, wondering if the adults around me were blind.
But what about you? Do you agree? Disagree? Consider me the foulest creature for complaining about a dead woman who could not help how she looked and how others reacted to her? Okay, I’ll save you the trouble because I probably agree with the third choice, too. But I would like some explanation for the difference between my reality and that of the rest of the world.
I agree. I mean, I agree with the class part, but she looked a lot like my grandmother… harsh darker hair, pale, thin, with almost non-existent lips. If I swung that way, I’m sure I wouldn’t kick her out of bed, and I concur that some of the appeal had to do with the hideousness of her predecessors. However, I just don’t get it either. She did have style though.
On the other hand, I wasn’t dazzled by Clinton’s looks at all. Perhaps I’m just not into power?
Well she is the only First Lady I have seen naked - so at least I have more data
As far as First Ladies go - there is a natural attempt for the press to puff them up. Same with the Brits and their royalty. I don’t think her face was that attractive, but she certainly had style and was in good shape. She held herself well and I can see the attraction. She certainly wasn’t ugly and well she seemed to be able to attract a guy that was considered pretty good looking himself.
I’ve heard plenty of people say great things about our current First Lady - and I just don’t see it there either, but again - Barack has some heavy mojo there. He picked her - so that leads me to believe there is something there - sometimes attractiveness can’t be fully conveyed in a photo.
No one is going to write a story saying “and John Kennedy fell in love with the somewhat above average - blah blah blah.”
I agreed with you for a long time. Plus I was fed up with all the attention her every move seemed to generate and couldn’t understand it at all. But then I got older and developed an appreciation of beauty. Now I think she was pretty damn hot…but in an iceberg sort of way. Plus things I’ve read have caused me to regard her as quite a snob, and that’s been a turnoff. So for the most part I now think she was a pretty good looking woman but “meh” on the on sex appeal scale.
And one of the richest dudes in the world, too.
She doesn’t do anything for me, but I don’t shake my head in bewilderment that she does for some other guys.
Her eyes were set too far apart. But JFK’s eyes were too close together, so between the two of them, John-John and Caroline turned out okay, in the eye department anyway.
She had class. And she kept it all throughout the assassination crisis, and well beyond.
Her composure that day, with her husband’s brains on her pretty pink dress, while the transfer of power of the executive branch was taking place. Class
Do you thing that John Jr. thought to step forward and salute his father’s casket parade on his own? No, she saw the importance of the act. She raised those children to show class.
Her later seclusion and attempts to keep a private life would be unheard of now.
I have to agree with the OP. She was barley passable because she was young and thin at the time most of the famous photos were taken but completely unattractive at the same time.
The thing that really turns me off is her voice. She sounds exactly like a high priced Northeastern escort would sound like circa 1960. That isn’t a good thing in my view. She was a complete airhead based on every interview I have ever heard. Caroline isn’t much better and John Jr. got himself killed along with others just through sheer stupidity.
A survey through Google Images has me thinking Kennedy was rather pretty and, combined with a good sense of class and charisma, could probably have wowed me in person.
At the time, this was certainly a big part of it. All we had seen in the White House previously were the likes of Mamie Eisenhower, Bess Truman and (shudder) Eleanor, who despite her excellent works, was a mutt. Jackie was much younger, slimmer, more intelligent and far prettier than any of those women. For a public that had been exposed to the beasts of the southern wild for the preceding decades, she was welcome relief.
