The photos taken later on at that grim swearing-in aboard Airforce One are not in colour. In these, the smears of John F Kennedy's blood appear black against the grey of the skirt. The dark trails are blood from the President's wounds when he fell against her after being shot in the head. Can you imagine how horrible it must be to walk around for hours with your dead husband's blood still on you? But Jackie didn't change out of those clothes on purpose. She refused when they asked her if she wanted to take her suit off.
"Let them see what they've done," she said.
Show that photo to anyone who says what you wear isn't important.
Half a century later, the suit cannot be shown publicly, because it would cause hysteria. That's the official word on it. That's rubbish.
Sure, it'll attract the usual rubber-neckers and fetishists of morbidity, but that is no reason to deprive people of the opportunity to engage with history. History is not dates and places, history is people. History, in this case, is bloodstained boucle, the story of a country whose president was assassinated, and the story of a wife whose husband was killed in front of her.
The personal is political, goes the slogan, and it doesn't get more personal than the clothes you stand up in.
Jackie knew this. She could have taken that suit off, but she didn't. What more proof is needed that she wished the world to see it?
- VIVA
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