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Photograph by Mark Shaw
July 28, 1929– Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis:
“There are two kinds of women, those who want power in the world and those who want power in bed.”
Michelle Obama was the third consecutive First Lady to have earned a graduate degree: Hillary Clinton has a law degree, Laura Bush has a Masters of Library Science, and Michelle Obama’s is in law. They are part of that first full generation that benefitted from the Women’s Rights Movement.
The First Lady is a living symbol and a representative of the USA. Flotus’ role still includes the so-called “traditional” duties of the role like ceremonial appearances and presiding over state dinners, but by the early 20th century, many of them began to take an active interest in social issues of their era. Eleanor Roosevelt was very much a partner in governing with her husband, as well as working as a journalist. Lady Bird Johnson took up the cause of Civil Rights and was a lifelong advocate for beautifying the nation’s cities and highways (“Where flowers bloom, so does hope”).
Our current First Lady’s official biography claims that she has a degree in Design and Architecture from the “University In Slovenia”. There is no ‘University in Slovenia’, nor is there a “University of Slovenia”. But, while the claim that she possesses a degree in Architecture and Design appeared on the RNC’s and Trump Corp. websites, the former Melanija Knavs did actually attend the University of Ljubljana by passing a “notoriously difficult” entrance exam, but she left after just one year to pursue her modeling career. What I do know is, Melania is the only FLOTUS who’s vulva I have seen, and I can’t absolutely vouch for Pat Nixon, but I think Melania Trump is the only First Lady to appear nude in a magazine.
First Lady is not an official title and she gets no salary, but her living space, travel and personal protection is provided by us, the tax payers.
Fascinating to think about how our current FLOTUS will be remembered by history.
Michelle Obama has my vote for Best First Spouse ever. But, Kennedy-Onassis comes close.
Jackie Kennedy-Onassis lived during an era when I was always aware of her celebrated enigmatic personality. During my lifetime, she was always the subject of some magazine article or news feature. From the time that she was the beautiful young bride of a handsome young US Senator, to elegant First Lady, to anguished widow, to bikini clad wife of a Greek shipping tycoon, to NYC career woman, her life was always under scrutiny.
For most of her life Kennedy-Onassis was dependent on the kindness of sadists. Her Wall Street broker father, John Vernou “Black Jack” Bouvier III was too drunk to walk her down the aisle on her wedding day; John Fitzgerald Kennedy presented her with a parade of breathless bimbos that are still being talked about 50 years later; Aristotle Socrates Onassis had his yacht’s bar stools covered in the skin of whale testicles and made her sign a prenuptial contract. None of them ended up breaking her spirit.
Kennedy-Onassis was not the sort of woman who fell apart from a day or a month or even a year of bad news or bad press. She kept it together. She fought for a legacy in what she regally regarded as “Her History”, a notion that included her passion in 18th century France and the prerequisite of maintaining a complicated ruse, both prideful and humiliating, around the requirements of marriage. She used every single one of her formidable gifts when facing the men in her life or the public’s perception of those relationships.
Kennedy-Onassis was an elegant, educated, calculating, intelligent, sophisticated woman. She also wielded real power because of her connections to powerful men. She also was flawed, of course. She could be a snob (I can be a bit of a snob, so I have an affinity for her).
Kennedy-Onassis was not all good or all bad. Even after audio tapes of her 1964 conversations with historian and friend Arthur Schlesinger Jr. were released in 2011, and hearing her voice again, she remains vague and veiled.
Whoever she really was, Kennedy-Onassis remains a Gay Icon and a Style Icon, a revered First Lady, and she has a special place in the history of the USA. You can hate her if you want. She wouldn’t care. It wouldn’t change a thing. You would also be in the minority; worldwide, she remains one of the most admired women of all time.
Despite the tragedies: she lost a baby, a husband and a brother-in-law in the span of a half decade, she was able to live the life so many people seem to strive for: privilege, glamour and a bottomless bank account.
Her husband’s brains were blown out onto her lap and then she had to be a beacon of strength for an entire nation when she was just 34 years old. Can you even imagine? The woman had balls, in addition to brains and ambition.
Watching videos today to prepare this column, her whispered voice seems like something that she could put on and use to her advantage. She was known to be a smart manipulator. Her father told her to always hold back and reveal little of yourself. Like her nemesis, Marilyn Monroe, she created her voice and she created her mystery. This is why she rarely did interviews. She was perceived as unreachable and untouchable to the public. Naturally, this made Kennedy-Onassis even more fascinating to the world. To keep the mystique going throughout her life, she never allowed pictures to be published of her smoking cigarettes or any recordings of her swearing, both which she did all the time.
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Photograph by David Mcgough, 1981
A Fashion Icon for certain, in the 1960s her pal designer Oleg Cassini provided Kennedy-Onassis with the clean suits, skirt hem down to middle of the knee, 3/4 sleeves on notch-collar jackets, sleeveless A-line dresses, above-the-elbow gloves, low-heel pumps, and the famous pillbox hats atop that bouffant hair that became known as the “Jackie Look”. In the 1970s it was wide-leg pantsuits, large lapel jackets, gypsy skirts, silk Hermès scarves, and large, round, dark sunglasses that became her new look. She often even wore jeans in public. In white jeans with a wide belt paired with an untucked black turtleneck pulled down over her hips was how she was dressed the one time I caught a glimpse of her at St. Ignatius Loyola Church at East 84th and Park Avenue where I sometimes went to mass.
“Sex is a bad thing because it rumples the clothes.”
A true Gay Icon‘s attributes include glamour, flamboyance, strength through adversity, and a hint of androgyny. They are often either tragic or martyred figures, or prominent pop culture idols. Kennedy-Onassis fits the bill. She was a woman of her era. Who knows how she would have felt about the changes in the lives of Gay Americans or about Marriage Equality. She certainly knew plenty of gay people. She was a very close friend and cousin of gay writer Gore Vidal and she hung out with Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote. On the other hand, she shut down her son John F. Kennedy Jr.’s acting career, his one true passion; because she feared that he would “become a fruit”. I am certain she would have not been happy if JFK Jr. had married me as I had once planned.
“I want minimum information given with maximum politeness.”
She always described the White House Years as the happiest time of her life. During that controversial time when she took on a total remodel of the Presidential residence, her BFF was White House Chief Usher J.B. West, a gay man who she called: “The Miracle Maker of the White House”. They shared cigarette breaks, gossip and gifts. West writes in his memoir Upstairs At The White House: My Life With The First Ladies (1973) that Jackie gave him a gift of a vermeil cigarette case inscribed: With deep appreciation for Jan. 20, 1961 – Nov. 22, 1963.
In January 1994, Kennedy-Onassis was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, the same cancer that I would spend a year doing battle with in 2014. I’m still here, but she only made it to May 1994, two months before her 64th birthday.
Tonight the Department of Justice moved to further undermine rights for LGBTQ people ensuring that they are treated unfairly in the workplace. A brief was filed arguing that prohibition of sex discrimination under federal law does NOT include the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
According to 
TruTV just released the first look at Sedaris’ upcoming (deranged) domestic design show satire At Home with Amy Sedaris which features a singing Jane Krowski.
