I never did “get” Jackie Kennedy. I thought she had good taste and was enviably thin, but she seemed wooden and wide-eyed and had that grating little-girl voice.

The view I’ve heard expressed is that this is what women were like at the time, but I happened to be alive at the time and didn’t know women like Jackie Kennedy. I am around the age of Caroline Kennedy, and I had a mother who was a clothes horse and spoke French but who otherwise did not resemble Jackie. She had strong opinions and an inflected, exuberant voice. Her friends were a diverse group of people, but none had Jackie’s particular brand of coy femininity.