1962 | DEFINING A NEW AMERICAN ERAJACQUELINE KENNEDY
BY NATALIE PORTMANThe youngesT FirsT Lady in nearLy 80 years, JacqueLine Kennedy
was unlike any before or since. What had been criticized about her during
her husband’s campaign for President—her style, her hair, her elite educa-
tion and upbringing—she recognized as assets once she was in the White
House. She was savvy at leveraging her public persona, quickly becom-
ing a fashion icon and a leading proponent of prioritizing history and the
arts for everyday Americans.
After her husband took office, she turned her attention to the refurbish-
ment of the White House. She took care to solicit artifacts from previous
Presidents, as well as redesigning rooms to reflect different eras of American
history. The First Lady’s nationally televised tour of the renovated White
House in 1962 drew a record 56 million viewers from around the world. (She
later won an honorary Emmy.) Having studied art history, she understood
the power of cultural monuments to create national and historical identity.
This understanding, combined with her trendsetting style and appearances,
helped her become so popular that President Kennedy famously described
himself as “the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris.”
After a little less than three years in the White House, at the age of 34,
she was made the world’s most famous widow. She had the unimaginable
composure to understand the historical and public importance of her re-
action to her husband’s assassination, even amid her personal grief and
trauma. She made several swift and crucial choices that helped keep the
nation together: she wore the now iconic pink suit with bloodstains dur-
ing Lyndon B. Johnson’s swearing-in, to remind the country of what had
just happened hours earlier. She orchestrated a funeral based on Lincoln’s
that gave a ritual and pageantry, cementing her husband’s legend. And she
crafted her family’s Camelot story into a carefully controlled narrative, to
allow the nation to have the sort of royalty they desired.
Following her husband’s passing, Jackie worked to create a safe and
nurturing environment for her children, eventually marrying Aristotle
Onassis. She later became an editor at Doubleday and a vibrant part of
New York City life—particularly with her advocacy for preserving Grand
Central Terminal and her support of the American Ballet Theatre. For a
woman so aware of her public narrative, she surprisingly said, “I want to
live my life, not record it.” In our current age of obsession over how we
present ourselves to the world, she is a model of one who found beauty
amid tragedy to truly appreciate her precious, only life.Portman is an Oscar-winning actor and director who starred in Jackie
THE KENNEDYS IN HYANNIS PORT, MASS., IN 1959MIRABAL: CASA MUSEO HERMANAS MIRABAL (3); MORENO: MPTVIMAGES/REUTERS; KENNEDY: MARK SHAW—MPTVIMAGES 61