Dirty Dancing is without a doubt one of the two or three movies I’ve seen the most in my life. It was my mom’s favorite, and I, in a display of good taste at a young age, quickly adopted it as one of my own. Honestly, I can’t remember exactly what I liked about it the first few dozen times, before every line was etched into my memory, but I’m confident it had something to do with a certain Mr. Patrick Swayze.
In case you’ve forgotten just what made Swayze great, I’ve come up with a list of his best moments in song. Read the full post at my pop culture blog, As Seen From a Red Ikea Couch.
When my husband woke me up to tell me Ted Kennedy had died, I felt exactly the same as if he’d told me bad news about someone we actually know.
Then I realized why I was so upset: Not only was Ted Kennedy one of the last two living children of Rose and Joseph P. Kennedy — Jean is now the sole survivor — he was the Kennedys. Without him and his 47 years as a senator fighting for civil rights, education and more, our image of the Kennedy family would have faded long ago. And it wouldn’t have been nearly as vivid to begin with. Sure, the assassinations of JFK and Bobby would remain etched in our minds, and we might have seen the occasional “where are they now?” story about their children and grandchildren, but our thoughts of the family would have been forever tethered to the past.
Because Teddy has been a constant reminder of the good things the Kennedys stood for, including first and foremost the responsibility to use everything you had to act on behalf of people with less power and influence than yourself, our memories of JFK and Bobby and the family at the peak of its power stayed fresh. We linked the senator’s causes and words to our larger sense of the Kennedy dynasty, which, if you think about it, would have been much less of a dynasty had it ended at the Ambassador Hotel in 1968.
Ted Kennedy didn’t technically represent me — I’ve never even been to Massachusetts — but I’ll miss knowing he’s in the Senate, making the kind of political decisions that benefit the people who most need someone speaking up for them. Read the rest of this entry »
Judging from a nude photo found in the possessions of the late Andy Warhol, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis wasn’t nearly as formal as her public persona. The image shows JFK’s widow skinny dipping.
People shocked and appalled by the length of Michelle Obama’s shorts are yanking their kids out of public schools as we speak.
According to the Associated Press, Jackie’s post-Camelot husband, Aristotle Onassis, had a paparazzo shoot the photo, and it eventually ended up as a promo for Hustler magazine. The archivists who found Andy’s autographed copy assumed Jackie sent it as a joke. I mean, she has to have had a good sense of humor to have gone along with this plan, right?
To recap: It appears the woman positioned as the anti-Marilyn was actually somewhat of a Marilyn herself. This isn’t really a surprise.
The essential qualities of a Marilyn woman are sex appeal and the confidence to use it. You’ve seen Jackie. She was sexy in a decidedly more delicate, feminine way, but sexy, and with exactly the wispy voice people wanted in their sexpots back then. She was gutsy, too. We saw that when she distanced herself from the life she’d known with JFK after his death, moving her family to New York rather than settling in with the Kennedy family.
My guess is there were several reasons she didn’t flash this side of herself in public. First, she wasn’t raised that way. The Bouviers were old money, the kind of family that raises a daughter to ride horses and study at the Sorbonne in Paris. If they hadn’t been, the Kennedy clan may have rejected her as JFK’s choice for a wife and she probably never would have become the first lady.
Beyond that, Jackie probably compared herself to Marilyn — something we all tend to do when we worry someone, like our husband, prefers another person to us. And there’s nothing like telling yourself the competition more effortlessly oozes sex appeal and fun to make you feel not at all sexy or fun. The times we’re most desperate to project ourselves in a certain way is the time we’re least able to do it, because we’ve psyched ourselves out.
Jackie found this out firsthand when she made her voice especially soft — and a little strange — and forced an awkward smile during the televised tour of the White House she gave to CBS in 1962, just a few months after President Kennedy met Monroe at a party. It could have been she wasn’t used to being on TV, I guess, but I’d bet she thought of how Marilyn looked on screen at some point before the taping.
Who knows? Maybe even the skinny dipping photo was a nod to Marilyn. Just before she died in August 1962, Marilyn famously shot a nude scene in a swimming pool for the unfinished film Something’s Got to Give. Still photos from the shoot have ended up on book covers, posters and more. Maybe Jackie and Ari had a good laugh about how people would react to Jackie doing the same.
The truth, of course, is that as much as the world likes to separate us into a group of Jackies and a group of Marilyns, and as much as we use such categories to measure ourselves, we all have a little of both in us. Jackie was no exception.
Privileged, but generous. Powerful, yet willing to empower others.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who died at 88 Tuesday, represented the very best of the Kennedy family and why we’re still fascinated by them.
Shriver’s experience with her mentally disabled sister, Rosemary Kennedy, led her to host Camp Shriver, a small-scale version of what would eventually become the Special Olympics, in her backyard beginning in 1962. Today, the camp’s grown into an event that brings together 3 million people in 200 countries each year.
We shouldn’t be surprised at what she created. As a Kennedy, Eunice Kennedy Shriver had the capability and the responsibility of doing something meaningful and lasting to help others. As Sen. Ted Kennedy said in a statement following her death, “She understood deeply the lesson our mother and father taught us — much is expected of those to whom much has been given.”
This blog is the place to find more information about me and my work, with links to news on my favorite subjects of media, women’s issues, education and pop culture sprinkled in for fun. I’ll also link to some of my favorite posts at TheLoop21.com, a cool Web site for news, commentary, and analysis, where I work as senior editor. I’d love your feedback, so please leave a comment or contact me using one of the ways listed on the right. You can also reach me at raechal@raechalleone.com.
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When my husband woke me up to tell me Ted Kennedy had died, I felt exactly the same as if he’d told me bad news about someone we actually know.
