No, I Don’t Want Jackie Kennedy’s Marriage

Lori Alexander just posted a blog praising Jackie Kennedy for being a good helpmeet to her husband. “I watched a YouTube video about and interviewing Jacqueline Kennedy yesterday and I want you to read these words carefully, many of them said by her,” Lori wrote. I have questions.

Lori described Jackie’s words in the video as follows:

“I liked staying in the background. I think he appreciated that in a wife.” She was devoted to making him happy. “I think a woman always adapts, especially if she’s young, when she gets married. She becomes the wife that she sees her husband wants!”

If she couldn’t help him in politics, she could keep harmony in the home. “I think it’s so good to be able to forgive quickly and I know that’s the quality that Jack liked in me.” She would apologize quickly if a dark cloud seemed to form between the two of them and he loved that.

“Jack demands that the man be the leader and his wife look up to him as a man.” Someone asked her where she gets her opinions. She answered that she got all of her opinions from her husband. “His political opinions would be the best,” she said. She liked the way the Japanese women modeled marriage to their husbands.

Let me just say, first, that Lori barely addresses all of JFK’s affairs. “She made it clear that the two of them lived for their children and each other amid the rumors of affairs,” Lori writes of Jackie. This doesn’t address a big problem with Lori’s patriarchal views—the very views she praises Jackie for holding: there is no accountability for the husband.

If the wife forgives her husband no matter what he does, looks up to him by default (and not based on whether it is deserved), and adapts to her husband—becoming “the wife that she sees her husband wants”—what’s going to stop him from being an unrepentant philanderer? Absolutely nothing. In theory, a man might feel guilty about cheating if his wife. But why? If his wife is unceasingly deferential and adulatory, why would he even feel bad about it?

In some sense, husbands and wives are also accountability partners. They are there to support each other, yes, but each also encourages the other to be the best version of themselves they can. If a woman can’t call her husband on bullshit when there is bullshit, that gets short-circuited. (Meanwhile, patriarchal teachers like Lori argue that husbands should call their wives on bullshit, because it is their job to protect and guide their wives—see this article for example.)

Lori praises Jackie’s comments on marriage as though Jackie’s marriage is something women today should want. It isn’t. JFK had a ridiculously large number of affairs, and they weren’t all that secret. Perhaps Jackie turned a blind eye to them because she saw them as normal, as just what men did—or perhaps she let them go because she didn’t think she had any choice. But I’ve never seen any suggestion that they had a mutually agreed upon open marriage.

Add to this the way Jackie talks about marriage in the video Lori references, which I watched. I wanted to see the context of the quotes, and let me just say that the context did not help.

“Jack demands that the man be the leader and his wife look up to him as a man,” Lori quotes Jackie as saying. Here’s the full quote from the video:

Jackie: “Jack so obviously demanded from a woman a relationship between a man and a woman where the man would be, you know, the leader, and the woman would be his wife and look up to him as a man. I always thought women who were scared of sex loved Adlai.”

Interviewer: “The challenge [unintelligible].”

Jackie: “Yeah! Not that there’d be the challenge with Jack, but it was a different kind of man. You know, all these twisted, these poor little women whose lives hadn’t worked out could find a bomb in Adlai, and Jack made them nervous.” 

What is that.

I am not a historian of the postwar era, but I suddenly wish I was. Was the word on the street that washed up career old maid women supported Adlai Stevenson because they were scared of sex and couldn’t handle a real man like JFK? Because that’s what it sounds like here!

I’m so fascinated by that last bit—which Lori completely left out—that I’m having trouble focusing on the first bit. But I do want you to notice something about it:

“Jack so obviously demanded from a woman a relationship between a man and a woman where the man would be, you know, the leader, and the woman would be his wife and look up to him as a man.”

Jack demanded. We don’t know whether this is what Jackie wanted. We only know that she quickly recognized that her husband was completely set on being the dominant figure in their marriage, and that her only options were to put up or shut up.

That’s not attractive.

Okay, what’s next? These bits, as told by Lori:

“I liked staying in the background. I think he appreciated that in a wife.” She was devoted to making him happy. “I think a woman always adapts, especially if she’s young, when she gets married. She becomes the wife that she sees her husband wants!”

Oy. There isn’t really more context for these quotes, except for this statement by Jackie: “He married me really for the things I was.” I’m not sure how that fits with her statement that a woman adapts to become the wife her husband wants—because she did also say that—but it’s interesting that Lori left out Jackie’s statement that her husband married her for the things she was and not because he wanted to shape her into something else.

Next there’s this from Lori:

If she couldn’t help him in politics, she could keep harmony in the home. “I think it’s so good to be able to forgive quickly and I know that’s the quality that Jack liked in me.” She would apologize quickly if a dark cloud seemed to form between the two of them and he loved that.

Again, there wasn’t really more context here, but I’d like to note that this isn’t really healthy if one party and one party only is the one constantly doing it. It’s odd that patriarchal teachers like Lori at once want men to be the leaders and also want women to pander to and infantilize men so they never have to actually grow up or take responsibility for the results of their actions.

Also, am I the only one reading this emphasis on being willing to forgive Jack quickly as a reference to his constant philandering? Because that’s not exactly a selling point there.

Finally, Lori adds this description from the video:

“Jack demands that the man be the leader and his wife look up to him as a man.” Someone asked her where she gets her opinions. She answered that she got all of her opinions from her husband. “His political opinions would be the best,” she said. She liked the way the Japanese women modeled marriage to their husbands.

Ouch.

Here’s the full quote in context:

Jackie: “Someone said, where do you get your opinions, and I said I get all my opinions from my husband, which is true, how could I have any political opinions, you know, his would be the best. It was really a rather terribly Victorian or Asiatic relationship which we had.”

Interviewer: “A Japanese wife.”

Jackie: “Yeah, which I think is best!” 

What.

Wait, what?

Okay, first of all, her comment about not being able to have her own political opinions is once again not a selling point. That’s not okay and it’s not what most women want today. It’s as though women existed as an appendage of their husbands—which, legally, at one point, they did.

But also, what were American perceptions of Japanese wives in the early 1960s? There’s clearly a form of orientalism and exoticism going on here—but what precisely were the stereotypes?

Curious, I managed to find a 1998 article in The Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies titled “Out of an obscure place”: Japanese War Brides and Cultural Pluralism in the 1950s. Here’s the most relevant bit: 

Perhaps the pronounced discomfort with the idea of Japanese war brides as American wives and mothers may be attributed to the unwillingness or inability of most non-Asian Americans to reconcile the national maternal or domestic ideal of American femininity with that other feminine ideal, the Asian, or sometimes simply “Asiatic” woman as the sexual delight of the war-weary white soldier.

Oh.

Okay. Well then. This hearkens back to earlier where Jackie said women who voted for Adlai Stevenson were scared of sex. That’s cool. Women navigated some pretty tricky waters in the 1950s. You could be the domestic goddess, but could you be a sex goddess at the same time? Jackie wants her interviewer to know that yes, yes she could. She could be all of those things—so long as she never had her own opinions.

Here’s what Lori had to say of Jackie, after watching the video:

Women, she lived out biblical womanhood. She was a help meet to her husband. She kept harmony in her marriage and in her home. I am sure he loved coming home to her each day. This is the recipe for keeping a good marriage. Become the help meet that the Lord has called you to be and build your home up instead of tearing it down.

What is a good marriage?

I worry that in Lori’s eyes a good marriage is one that is intact (i.e. they are not divorced). Actually, that’s not quite right. Lori frequently bashes marriages that have women who are vocal, who get upset with their husbands, or who demand equality. So in her eyes, a good marriage is one that is intact and has a woman who smiles and keeps her mouth shut. Or open, maybe. But you get the idea.

Quick reminder that Jackie Kennedy’s husband cheated on her left and right. But their marriage was a good marriage because she ignored those things and kept smiling. So that’s cool. When it comes to the health of a marriage—to what counts as a good marriage—God care only about whether women are submissive and not at all about whether men cheat? Because that’s the message I’m getting!

I’ve often seen patriarchal teachers say that wives should always put out because if they aren’t constantly sexually available their husbands will cheat. I’ve also seen patriarchal teachers say women shouldn’t put out before marriage because then their partners will have no incentive to marry them. But doesn’t having a wife who always forgives and is willing to overlook fidelity with a smile remove an incentive not to cheat? Doesn’t it create a set of circumstances and incentives favorable to cheating?

I mean, we could also all try treating each other as people first and not as cookie cutter gender cutouts. There’s a thought.

I wonder whether some women perhaps use sex as a way to overlook and paper over all the things that are wrong with their marriages. Sure, her husband won’t brook her having her own opinions, but boy is he into her! Sure, her husband sees other women, but it’s not like he’s neglecting her body while he’s at it. Oh no, he’s still obsessed with her! He can’t get enough of her. Those other things don’t matter, because she still has him wrapped around her little finger when she moves her hips just so. Sex becomes a way for her to convince herself that everything is okay—or that she still has some modicum of control.

And that’s just sad.

So no, no thank you, I don’t want Jackie Kennedy’s marriage.

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