Our Jackie: Public Claims on a Private Life

by Karen M. Dunak

Tells the story of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis through her evolving public persona, from campaign wife to First Lady to fallen idol to treasured national iconWhen Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis became First Lady of the United States over sixty years ago, she stepped into the public spotlight. Although Jackie is perhaps best known for her two highly-publicized marriages, her legacy has endured beyond twentieth-century pop culture and she remains an object of public fascination today.Drawing on a range of sources– from articles penned for the women’s pages of local newspapers, to esteemed national periodicals, to fan magazines and film– Our Jackie evaluates how media coverage of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis changed over the course of her very public life. Jackie’s interactions with and framing by the American media reflect the changing attitudes toward American womanhood. Over the course of four decades, Jackie was alternatively praised for her service to others, and pilloried for her perceived self-interest. In Our Jackie, Karen M. Dunak argues that whether she was portrayed as a campaign wife, a loyal widow, a selfish jetsetter, or a mature career woman, the history of Jackie’s highly publicized life demonstrates the ways in which news, entertainment, politics, and celebrity evolved and intertwined over the second half of the twentieth century.Examining the intimate chronicles of this famous First Lady’s life, Our Jackie suggests that media coverage of this enigmatic public figure revealed as much about the prevailing views of women in America– how they should behave and whom they should serve– as it did about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as an individual.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, History

360 pages, Hardcover

First published November 12, 2024

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Tells the story of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis through her evolving public persona, from campaign wife to First Lady to fallen idol to treasured national icon

When Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis became First Lady of the United States over sixty years ago, she stepped into the public spotlight. Although Jackie is perhaps best known for her two highly-publicized marriages, her legacy has endured beyond twentieth-century pop culture and she remains an object of public fascination today.Drawing on a range of sources—from articles penned for the women’s pages of local newspapers, to esteemed national periodicals, to fan magazines and film—Our Jackie evaluates how media coverage of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis changed over the course of her very public life. Jackie’s interactions with and framing by the American media reflect the changing attitudes toward American womanhood.

Over the course of four decades, Jackie was alternatively praised for her service to others, and pilloried for her perceived self-interest. In Our Jackie, Karen M. Dunak argues that whether she was portrayed as a campaign wife, a loyal widow, a selfish jetsetter, or a mature career woman, the history of Jackie’s highly publicized life demonstrates the ways in which news, entertainment, politics, and celebrity evolved and intertwined over the second half of the twentieth century.

Examining the intimate chronicles of this famous First Lady’s life, Our Jackie suggests that media coverage of this enigmatic public figure revealed as much about the prevailing views of women in America– how they should behave and whom they should serve– as it did about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as an individual.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: How ghastly it must be to be famous. Nothing, not even your underwear preferences, is personal and private. Mrs. Kennedy was the first media celeb to experience this in the television age...though TV was most assuredly not the worst offender in depriving this upper-class woman of her private life (looking at you, recently-twitching corpse of The Saturday Evening Post).

The fact is, we never knew the elegant, cultured woman, comfortable in her own skin, that wore masks to keep the hoi polloi from knowing how very much of the haut ton she was. And the best thing about it all is, she knew what she was doing. She was a very careful curator of her, and her family's, image. She was a participant in this game, and a victim of it; the ways she worked to contain the access of an intrusive force of curiosity onto her private life were defensive, effective, and after a certain learning curve, collaborative.

Author Dunak has gone into what feels like every archive of 1960s media there is to find the scraps and bits that illuminate American ideas about this icon of our culture. I'm deeply impressed at the sources! It seems the author has synthesized the opinions of the entire spectrum of the US media landscape...what a grisly task that'd be, thank all the goddesses she didn't have social media to grapple with!...into several archetypes of sorts. Mrs. Kennedy as Grieving Widow-in-Chief. Jackie O. as selfish traitor who abandoned her country to run away with an ugly old rich Greek guy. Jackie Kennedy as aspirational American homemaker-cum-style icon. JKO, the book editor at Viking...until they published a book about the Kennedys that was a hatchet job, when she moved to Doubleday...the erudite, late-life Career Woman. None of them was the woman herself, though that's outside the scope of this book. We have here a chance to grapple with the essential issue of celebrity culture: These are people, and we as consumer-celebrity units, treat them as property. Our responses of pleasure, when the icons are well-behaved, to outrage when we think they are not, is not new, though the outrageous extreme of cancel culture is worse now than in, say, Ingrid Bergman's day, but it's still not new.

Author Dunak offers us a thorough and deftly presented categorization and analysis of this strain in US popular culture. It affords the reader the clarity in distance to think about the ways in which we individually play along with, support, and/or amplify the idea that we "own" those we admire. We're asserting control over women, particularly, but in fact over all those who dare to be tall poppies in our field of vision.

It was a sobering take-away but one that felt omnipresent if never shouted at me by Author Dunak.

It's not quite a five-star read, as it is definitely academic if more accessibly so than most.

[Bargain Sleuth Book Reviews · Rating 5 out of 5]

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Thanks to NYU Press and NetGalley for the digital copy of this book; I am leaving this review voluntarily.

When I was growing up, “Jackie O” was largely out of the limelight. I didn’t read tabloids, but I remember comedian Joan Rivers picking on her. In high school, the 25th anniversary of John Kennedy’s assassination brought forth a bunch of new documentaries and books about the Kennedy family, and I was hooked. Just like with Princess Diana, I read and watched everything I could on the women. This book, more than any other on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, made me realize how similar the women’s experiences were with the press.

Her story is told through media coverage of the day. I really appreciate the author’s efforts at researching the various publications archives, such as Womens Wear Daily, Photoplay, Life, Time, and The Saturday Evening Post, as well as local publications across the United States. What’s really telling throughout the years is that by choosing not to engage with the media with a few exceptions, the media machine created the image we have of Jacqueline Kennedy. She only gave a handful of interviews throughout her 64-year-old life, and portions of those interviews are included in this book.

No matter what Onassis said, or didn’t say, or wore, or how she had her hair styled, was fodder for the tabloids and mainstream press, just like Princess Diana a few decades later. What is most galling is that, when she was raising John and Caroline in New York City, the venerable Saturday Evening Post wrote an in-depth article about her with a map of the 30 most frequented places for her and the kids, with their addresses and time of day they were there, including the kids’ school schedules. What in the actual ???? You can see why Jacqueline wanted a life out of the spotlight and was worried about her children’s safety.

There are other infuriating things about the media in this book and their treatment of “America’s Widow,” but suffice it to say that once you read all the coverage of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, you’ll get a better understanding of how/why her image is what it is today.

[Joseph J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much has been written about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Her life, already more public than most before her engagement and marriage to JFK, really became page one fodder with her Newport wedding to the up and coming. In an engaging style author Karen Dunak divides Jackie's very public life, press coverage and public reaction as she moved from candidate's wife to First Lady like never before, and then Dallas to widowhood and shocking marriage in Greece. (I remember that very well and my mother's incredulous reaction to the first television coverage from the Scorpios chapel!) Unlike so much about this reluctantly public woman, Dunak does not exploit or scandalize. The bad post Dallas moments-the William Manchester Death of a President controversy, followed by Onassis) are related in a no-nonsense style. In short this book is a unique take on a unique woman, a singular First Lady who gently educated her nation about its history and art and cultural accomplishment. Her "second widowhood", the career in publishing and the effort to save Grand Central Terminal, and finally, her shocking illness and tragic death. All are covered in these pages as they were on the front pages of newspapers (remember them?) and magazines and tabloids. Her death in May 1994 brought many, to their surprise, a sense of loss and even tears, even the most professional columnist! This is a serious yet enticingly readable addition to the history of the John F. Kennedys and particularly the irreplaceable Jackie.

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jackie Kennedy Onassis was a striking figure in history. In some cases people thought that she was just like them. In others, she was something that a woman of the time strived to be, but couldn't possibly achieve. In Our Jackie, the author visits every major version of Kennedy Onassis, how the public saw her, and how she had more to do with crafting her own public image than many thought possible.

There are so many versions of a person, especially those who spend their lives in the public eye. However, you will find that people react differently to each version, finding the one that they like best and championing it, no matter what others may say. With Jackie, some love her as the president's wife, some love her as the grieving widow, while others will scold her choice in a second husband and scoff at her later years of independence and career which contrasts with her beginnings of devoted wife and mother.

This book goes to prove that no matter who you are, you can never really know another person when they are so examined under the microscope of fame, whether they sought to achieve that or not.

*Book provided by NetGalley

[Nina Pernina · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was read as more than 300 pages long report that summons newspapers’ coverage about Jackie’s life. It was very thoroughly analyzing (I have to applaud to the level of research) what different sources had been writing about her, their responses to the events and their criticism of what Jackie should and shouldn’t do, but at the end, do I really got any glimpse on her private life as the title of the book promised? No. Unfortunately I found this book very dry and got lost in numerous quotations.

Thank you Netgalley and NYU Press for providing me with the ARC copy in return for my honest review.

[patrick Lorelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book focuses on Jackie Kenndy’s life through the media. There are times at the beginning of the book where you see the smart Jackie and the jobs that she was offered before meeting and then marrying JFK. After that and really after that tragic day in Dallas, everything would be changed along with the way people looked at her. Again that was changed when she married Onass and then another change after that marriage. A different way of looking at her life and still a good book.

[Theresa]

This is a fine work of historical scholarship that will appeal to many non-academic readers who are interested in women's history and/or the lives of First Ladies. Dunak faithfully sticks to her emphasis on public perceptions of Jacqueline Kennedy, so this is neither a detailed biography nor a gossipy tell-all.

[Literary Redhead · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating look at how media coverage of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis evolved throughout her life. A unique capture of the beloved former First Lady.