One of the most iconic and beloved women of the 20th century, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, is remembered for her elegance, grace, and impeccable style. But she was human like everyone else, and she had her private habits and secrets. What was hidden behind the perfect image? What personal habits did the White House fairy keep away from the public eye? Jacqueline had been smoking since her youth, and she carefully hid this long-standing habit from the public.
In a rare photo taken in Newport, Rhode Island, around 1945 to 47, a teenage Jacqueline Bouvier smiles at the camera while holding a long cigarette holder. She holds it lightly, almost like a feather, a confident and slightly daring gesture. It may be surprising today, but in 1950 smoking was not only socially acceptable, it was even recommended as a way to calm nerves, reduce stress, or control weight.
Long cigarette holders were especially popular among women, symbolizing sophistication and high social status. At first, Jacqueline smoked secretly from her parents. Later, in the White House, in order to preserve the perfect image of the First Lady, her ashtrays and cigarettes were hidden from visitors and the press.
Reporters knew about her habit, but they kept silent. At that time, privacy was often exchanged for respect, and Jacqueline knew how to win people’s sympathy and admiration, hiding her pain, irritation, and fatigue behind a perfect smile. The cigarette became her small rebellion against perfection. Next to Jacqueline’s bedroom, there was a small room overlooking the garden.
When she said, “I need to freshen up,” it actually meant, “I need to smoke,” and the staff all understood this phrase. This image shocks many people today. In one photograph, Jacqueline Kennedy is seen smoking while pregnant with her third child, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy. He was born prematurely on August 7th, 1963, at just 34 weeks, weighing only 4 lb 10.5 oz.
Shortly after birth, he was diagnosed with hyaline membrane disease, what we now call neonatal respiratory distress syndrome. At that time, the disease was poorly understood, and treatment options were very limited. Despite intensive therapy, including one of the earliest uses of hyperbaric oxygen treatment, he died on August 9th, 1963, just 39 hours after birth.
It was only in 1964 when the Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health was published that the dangers of smoking, including smoking during pregnancy, began to be widely recognized by the medical community. It took many more years to fully understand the specific risks to fetal development, including low birth weight, premature birth, and breathing problems.
After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline began smoking even more. It was as if the smoke could block out her memories. Nicotine helped her keep moving, helped her not lose control. There was always a candle burning in her room next to John’s picture. In her 2017 memoir, Jackie’s Girl, My Life with the Kennedy Family, Kathy McKeon, a maid who served the Kennedy family for more than 13 years, wrote, “Mrs.
Kennedy said that the light helps her remember that it was all real. She still wears mourning, but for the children she is always calm and collected.” Her thin silhouette, her thoughtful profile in the slow, drifting smoke was often seen on verandas by the sea in the half darkness. In another rare photo taken around 1975 at the American Ballet Theatre at Lincoln Center, Jacqueline smokes a cigarette with a mouthpiece, once again turning a simple act into a symbol of sophistication.
It is a rare chance to see Jacqueline in an unprepared moment, and she seems even more attractive than the impeccable image she showed the world. For Jacqueline, smoking was not only an addiction, it was a ritual. She had a strong will, and if she had truly wanted to, she could probably have quit anytime. But the cigarette gave her a sense of control over herself, over her emotions, and even over her weight.
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We’ll talk more about that later. She had been smoking since she was 15, sometimes two, even three packs a day. And yet, when it came to appearance, Jacqueline was extremely disciplined. She knew that her smile was her greatest weapon, so she took great care of her teeth, often rinsing her mouth with peroxide solutions to preserve that famous dazzling smile.
After marrying Aristotle Onassis, Jackie oh no longer tried so hard to maintain a perfectly flawless public image, but she still preferred to smoke discreetly, often using a cigarette holder to maintain her sophisticated look. Jacqueline finally quit smoking in early 1994, after she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and at the request of her daughter, Caroline.
It became another turning point in her life. Many people have heard the legend that Jacqueline lived on only 600 calories a day. In archival films and countless photographs, her image is flawless, almost like an imperial ballet ballerina. The smile, the pearls, the grace.
Jacqueline controlled her weight and diet almost fanatically. For weeks, she could eat almost nothing, a boiled egg, cottage cheese, and lettuce leaves. But according to the memoirs of maid Kathy McKeon, who served the Kennedy family for more than 13 years, sometimes at night Jacqueline would quietly go into the kitchen and eat ice cream straight from the container.
Today, this pattern, strict dieting followed by secret night time eating, would likely be described as an eating disorder, a typical bulimic cycle. Nevertheless, we’re talking about Jacqueline’s habits, and we should not forget that she was born into wealth and lived like a princess. Every morning, the White House butler served her breakfast in bed.
Usually it was two boiled eggs, toast with honey, and tea or coffee with skim milk. But sometimes Jacqueline started the day with only coffee and a cigarette, thin as Mrs. Kennedy herself, as Kathy McKeon later wrote. The maid also recalled that she had never seen her mistress have a real appetite. For lunch, the First Lady often had just a cup of broth and a thin sandwich, sometimes with toasted cheese.
Other times it was baked beef, cottage cheese, or something like that with skim milk. Her favorite dinner included meat. She preferred lamb with potatoes and green beans or cold poached salmon. A popular dermatologist of that era once advised Jacqueline to eat fish in any form and drink champagne for beauty and health.
She did not like sweets very much, but sometimes she would eat an apple together with the children. Where did the legend about the famous 600 calories come from? Nutritionists later studied the memoirs of Mrs. Kennedy Onassis’ contemporaries, estimated her very small portions, and converted them into calories.
The media quickly picked up the story, turning it into a legend and emphasizing the First Lady’s almost fanatical control over her weight. Maid Kathy McKeon, who worked for the family from 1964 to 1977, described her mistress as the perfect lady, obsessed with cleanliness and order. Bed linen had to be ironed and changed every day, even if Jacqueline had not slept at home.
Jacqueline carefully matched every outfit with accessories. Her slippers and robe had to match her nightgowns. Her negligees were always perfectly ironed. One of Kathy McKeon’s most unusual duties was to carve a small cross into the soles of Jacqueline’s size 10 shoes so that she would not slip on the marble floors in her house.
According to Dr. Erno Laszlo, Jacqueline found exercise boring, but she took great care of her legs and was very afraid of varicose veins. Very slender, even thin in her later years, Jacqueline always loved trousers of all kinds, shorts, jeans, classic straight trousers in the style of Marlene Dietrich, and cropped cigarette pants.
But she could only wear them on vacation. In official settings, the etiquette of the 1960s required the president’s wife to wear only conservative, elegant skirts. Minis, which Jackie also liked and could easily afford to wear, were strictly inappropriate for official appearances. Minimum jewelry, maximum meaning. On ordinary days, Jacqueline wore only pearls.
She said, “Pearls don’t scream, they listen.” She kept all her jewelry in perfect order, carefully stored in boxes, safes, and velvet cases, each set in its own place. Mrs. Kennedy Onassis also had a habit typical of very wealthy people. She rarely carried cash. At the same time, she was generous both with gifts and with advice.
Remember Jacqueline’s words, “If you’re unlucky with your children, everything else loses its meaning.” She was an incredibly devoted mother. Although she tried to hide it so as not to embarrass or pressure her children. After all, they were Kennedy children. And in that family tradition, the role of women was often limited to giving birth to heirs, church duties, and managing the household.
Jacqueline was incredibly close with her children, especially John. He is one of the most vivid characters in Katie McKean’s book, a sweet but very hyperactive boy. He once released his sister’s parrots from their cages, and being endlessly curious, even managed to drop an aspirin tablet into his ear.
Mrs. McKean wrote that while his cousins were always running to the sea, John dreamed of the sky. He spent many happy hours in Hyannis Port sitting inside an old Air Force plane. In 1999, tragically, his own plane crashed. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was a true book lover. Books surrounded her from childhood.
After college, when she worked as a reporter, she once traveled to London on assignment to cover the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. She returned home with a huge suitcase full of books for John F. Kennedy, whom she was dating at the time. They loved reading together. Many Americans saw Jacqueline as the perfect symbol of grace and elegance.
But few knew her as the woman who could sit on the floor of her office and draw illustrations, or fly to California to persuade Michael Jackson to write his autobiography. As an editor at Viking and Doubleday publishing houses, she helped publish nearly 100 books during the last two decades of her life. Some people saw her as a rich socialite from Fifth Avenue, a calculating and cold woman.
But in reality, she adored books and ballet, understood art, and often preferred quiet hours alone with a book to noisy social events. Some thought she was arrogant and distant, but in fact, she was a very delicate, shy, and vulnerable person. She became a widow at the age of 34, and everyone remembers the terrible circumstances under which that happened.
The suffering and loneliness she experienced could not be learned from books. Jacqueline learned the hard lessons of the Kennedy family very well. She never made a cult out of her misfortunes and learned to endure the blows of fate in her own ways, doing yoga, shopping, or sometimes relaxing with a glass of her favorite daiquiri.
No one was supposed to know who she really was, and perhaps no one ever fully did. There’s not a single truly private interview. No one ever got a careless confession from her. All her public statements sounded careful and controlled, almost like official White House protocol, spoken in her quiet, elegant voice.
Every public appearance was like the entrance of a queen. It didn’t matter whether she was wearing jeans, evening makeup, holding an ice cream cone, or carrying her favorite handbag, she still looked like royalty. She was a queen, and it seems she will remain one forever. If you would like to hear more human stories about the people who made and influenced our history,
