Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn?: Timeless Lessons on Love, Power, and Style by Pamela Keogh. Hardcover, 272 pages.
You know what would be a fun book? A book that took Paul Kinsey’s Season 2 statement that all women are either a Jackie (Kennedy) or Marilyn (Monroe) to heart, and in a lighthearted way offered tests and quizzes on how to decide whether you’re a Jackie or a Marilyn (or, I suppose, an Irene Dunne). You could have style and lifestyle guidance for each kind of woman.
You know what else would be a really good book? Using both Jackie and Marilyn as style icons; remarkable and aspirational women, and then showing how to achieve “the Jackie” or “the Marilyn.” You could show how they’re alike, how they differ, and how the reader could up her style and satisfaction by aiming high.
You know what else would be a good book? Comparing Jackie and Marilyn as historical figures. Here are these two amazing, iconic women who were alive and influential at the same time, and were associated for a time with the same man. Yet in many ways (as Paul knew) they seem to be opposite. So, who were these women? Side-by-side biographical sketches, both likening and contrasting, would make for great reading, don’t you think?
You know what’s not a great idea for a book? Doing all three at once.
Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? is really frustrating because parts of it are quite good, especially the third “book,” the paralleling of two fascinating women’s lives. But when it’s all muddled together, it doesn’t make sense. Sometimes it’s not clear if the author is talking about historical Jackie, or “the Jackie” (the “type”) or aspirational Jackie. Sometimes she wanders off into her own opinion (the style guide “book”) and then you have to think back and wonder if the preceding paragraphs were also the author’s opinion. I mean, when she’s telling you that Jackie would never tolerate a man leaving the seat up, I’m pretty sure this isn’t information available about the historical Jackie O. So then I want to flip back through the preceding pages and see what else may or may not be accurate.
Or when she tells you how to use aspirational Marilyn to have a fabulous, satisfying love life, but then she reintroduces historical Marilyn, who suffered from enormous depression, drank to excess, and was divorced three times, somehow emulating her love life doesn’t seem like such a good idea.
Most simply, the author defines two types but then tells you ways in which Marilyn and Jackie were alike. Clearly, all women aren’t alike in those ways, but Keogh doesn’t then acknowledge that the type thing has fallen apart. It’s just aggravating.
It’s a cute book, but if you take it seriously, you’ll probably tear your hair out.
5 Responses to “Book review: Are you a Jackie or a Marilyn?”
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I always wondered something: Did people actually in the 60s think of women as “Jackie vs. Marilyn”? Or is this something that people came up with afterward when we it came to light JFK was probably sleeping with both? I always had a feeling the comparison in the 50s and 60s was more “Audrey vs. Marilyn” in terms of female types.
@ Empress Rouge: As someone who was alive and even working by the late 60s, I can answer at least on a personal level your interesting question about whether comparisons between Jackie and Marilyn would have been made.
I had a very heated debate with a close friend in 1970 or so about which woman was worthy of our admiration: Jackie Kennedy or Judy Collins? She stuck up for Jackie (elegance, devotion to her children) and I found myself in the Judy Collins camp trying to defend the fact that she left her child behind with her ex-husband while she pursued her calling as a folk singer. My best argument was that she didn’t have Jackie K’s enormous wealth and resources, and did what she had to do given her much more humble background.
We never would have considered Marilyn Monroe as part of our equation, maybe because she wasn’t a mother or maybe just because she was so iconic she simply just stood alone and wasn’t suitable for a compare and contrast.
We still laugh about this famous debate. My friend has over the years come closer to living a Judy Collins life and is somewhat more sympathetic to what artists sometimes have to do to create. I have not flip-flopped, though. I guess I think that both Jackie K. and Marilyn M. both lived in such rarefied environments that there was no point for real-world folks to consider either of them as role models.
I’m an Einstein-ette. Which mean that anyone that Jackie or Marilyn would have have romantically/socially interacted with would run from from someone like me.
From what I understand girly-geeks did not socially exist in the 1960′s.
I was just flipping through this at Barnes & Noble the other day. They had them in the cafe section. I agreee with the review.
[...] thing to combine your “angle” with straight-ahead fashion advice, as I discovered with Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? It’s easy to lose your way or to muddy your [...]