HomeHomeMay 2004
Guilty Pleasures: Women's Magazines
Have you ever had a fascination with a certain subject--something which has stayed with you for most of your life? Perhaps it’s a "guilty pleasure," or a secret passion--perhaps it’s something you may not want to admit to friends or family, but it’s there, all the same.
My "guilty pleasure" is a fascination with media--in particular, women’s magazines--and this includes the ways in which women are portrayed. It could have started when I was small and swiped my grandmother’s "romance" magazines, trashy tabloids, and gossipy movie magazines. A family member alerted my mother to my bad habit, and in due course, I received a lecture about my reading choices. All I knew was that these trashy magazines peaked my interest more than the copies of "Presbyterian Life" lying around my grandmother’s house.
Reading about the exploits of movie stars such as Liz Taylor or former First Lady Jackie Kennedy Onassis was much more exciting than learning how to be a good little Presbyterian girl. These magazines focused on women’s lives---interesting women--and the readers were put in the role of judge and jury as to what these "cover girls" should or should not be doing with their lives.
Now, of course, it all seems so sexist, so judgmental, and so unfair to the women who wound up in the magazines. However, at the time, these stories spoke volumes about the way society viewed the roles of women.
Two rivals: Jackie and Liz
Author Wayne Koestenbaum’s immensely creative Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting An Icon (1995, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York) describes how early 1960’s movie magazines made a "star" of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and compared her to Elizabeth Taylor:
"The magazines explicitly linked the two through compare-and-contrast headlines, such as JACKIE WILL MARRY! LIZ WILL DIVORCE!, or JACKIE’S HOPES FOR CAROLINE, LIZ’S FEARS FOR LIZA, or LOVE...The Jinx That Haunts LIZ! TRAGEDY...The Jinx That Threatens JACKIE! Sometimes they were bound even closer: Jackie and Liz Fight To Keep The Same Man. Or Jackie and Liz, Soul Sisters. Or The SHOCKING Photos! JACKIE DISGRACED AS ARI BOOZES IT UP WITH LIZ IN PUBLIC BAR! Jackie and Liz were most explicitly juxtaposed on June 1962 Photoplay’s cover. Its headline read: AMERICA’S 2 QUEENS!
At least during the Kennedy Administration, the two Queens represented contradictory moral principles. Liz was the swinging vixen, greedy for love and jewels; Jackie was the princess, tasteful and decorous. Liz was trash; Jackie was royalty. Photoplay’s November 1963 cover (issued before JFK’s assassination) immortalized the contrast in the twin captions: MARRIAGE & TASTE, PASSION & WASTE. Jackie and JFK stood for marriage and taste, Liz and Burton for passion and waste."
Koestenbaum points out how Jackie eventually rivaled Liz in the "sin" department by the end of the 1960’s, due to her marriage to Ari Onassis.
Naturally, the stories revolved around their relationships with the men in their lives. Without their men, or their children, was there anything worth reading about Jackie or Liz? Were they more interesting because of their relationships to men?
Last fall, while poking around a neighborhood antique store, I found two remnants from this era. The first is a copy of "United in Grief: Three Widows Share Their Sorrow," a collector's edition magazine put together by Metro Publishers in 1968. It is a "Photographic Report of the Aftermath of Three Assassinations;" that is, photographs of Coretta Scott King, Ethel Kennedy, and Jackie Kennedy compiled by UPI in the years before and after the loss of their husbands.
Did we expect they would keep their identities as widows first and foremost, forgetting that they were young and had a lot of living to do?
I also have a copy of Motion Picture magazine from January 1969. Jackie is on the cover, with Jack. In the color photo, possibly taken on the night of JFK’s inauguration, both look like royalty. Next to that photo is a black and white one of Ari Onassis, looking, well, swarthy and suspicious. Judging from that photo, you would not want to meet Mr. Onassis in a dark alley at midnight! Cutting across the bottom half of the magazine, the caption screams, "Millions ask...’JACKIE, HOW COULD YOU?’ Inside story of the STRANGEST marriage of the century." Across the very top of the magazine is another headline, "Liz to Let Daughter Appear in Homosexual Movie! Should She?"
Anniversary of Jackie's passing
Interestingly, this week marks the 10th anniversary of the passing of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She represented a bygone era, and was known for her beauty, style, grace, intelligence, and above all, her discretion. She knew that she simply did not owe us an explanation as to who she was, or how she chose to live her life, and that very quality may well be one of the best parts of her legacy in our current confess-all American culture.
After JFK’s death, she took her two young children, left Washington for New York, and eventually began to live life on her own terms. In 1968, Americans were stunned when she chose to marry again--this time to Greek billionaire, Ari Onassis. Following his death, she went to work in the publishing world, and this radical act stunned Americans even more.
Author Edward Klein, Just Jackie: Her Private Years (1998, Ballantine Books, New York) includes quotes from Gloria Steinem, who wrote about her famous friend:
"When she was alone again after Onassis’ death, the speculation about her future plans only seemed to split in two. Would she become a Kennedy again (that is, more political, American and serious) or remain an Onassis (more social, international, and simply rich)? What no one predicted was her return to the publishing world she had entered briefly after college--to the kind of job she could have had years ago, completely on her own. And that’s exactly what she did."
Klein writes that in the 1980’s and 1990’s, Jackie served as a role model for women because she seemed to "have it all". Compared to modern-day feminists, who were portrayed as man-hating by the media, Klein claims that:
"Women who wanted to have a measure of independence and a profession of their own, without sacrificing the benefits of womanhood, looked to Jackie’s example. They thought to themselves: If Jackie can do it, so can I."
Klein writes that Jackie was "lovely, stylish, and clearly attractive to men; she was also smart, capable, and a very good mother."
So it was, that by the time of Jackie’s passing, her "redemption" was complete. We loved her, we hated her, we loved her yet again. We never understood her as a human being---we only judged the image we created of her in our collective consciousness, and this was done with the "help" of the women’s magazines.
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis continues to fascinate us still. Her image graces the cover of the May 2004 issue of Vanity Fair magazine (and the photo was taken in April, 1961!) The headline reads, "PRIVATE CAMELOT...Jackie Kennedy’s White House Secrets..How History’s Most Fabulous First Lady Dealt with Sex, Smoking, Her Weight, and All Those Other Women."
Hmmm, perhaps life in the world of magazines hasn’t changed so much after all these years!
Teresa
tcallies@hotmail.com
News, Resources, and Other Tidbits:
The White House has a biography of Ms. Onassis. In addition, a site devoted to Arlington National Cemetery has a bio of her as well.
Later this year, Chicago’s Field Museum will host an exhibit called "Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years."
News From WITNE Friends:
Our friends at University of Queensland Press inform us that Larissa Behrendt’s new book, Home has just been published. Ms. Behrendt is Professor of Law and Indigenous Studies and Director of the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney. The accomplished Ms. Behrendt’s Home is the winner of the David Unaipon award for Indigenous Writers.
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