How the Naked Photos of Jackie Kennedy Showed Her Inner Marilyn

When the archivists sorting through pop artist Andy Warhol's possessions this month found an autographed nude photo of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis [2], we heard a collective gasp. (Maybe from the same people shocked and appalled by the length of Michelle Obama's shorts?)

I really wasn't surprised, at least not about the existence of the photo. The second season of Mad Men [3] featured an ad campaign asking women whether they were a Jackie or Marilyn. [4] But it doesn’t really work like that. Despite her oh-so-chic wardrobe and prim and proper manners, I knew deep down Jackie had a Marilyn (yes, as in Monroe) side to her personality—because most glamorous women do. Also, as a biography addict who's long read about both Jackie and her husband's most famous mistress, I immediately recognized the similarities to nude photos Marilyn took on the set of her last film, Something's Got To Give [5]. Shot within months of Marilyn's death in August 1962, the photos of her with a glistening pool in the background continue to appear in books and articles about the legendary actress.

Many women who are drawn to Jackie hold back a little. Yes, she was classy and eminently photogenic. But it's hard to truly love a woman in a pillbox hat who waves her way through the world like a beauty queen. And even harder to forgive her for suffering silently through her husband's affairs. But this photo, passed on to someone she must have suspected might not keep the secret, is like a message to all of us almost-Jackie-lovers. Yes, I have a Marilyn side, and I will take on those naked mistresses of his, not with bitterness or anger, but with sweet revenge ... carefully orchestrated.

How did those 1971 Jackie-without-her-swimsuit photos come to be? The Associated Press reported that Jackie's second husband [6], Aristotle Onassis, "got a paparazzi to take pictures of her skinny-dipping." Their source was Matt Wrbican, the leader of the archivists sorting out Warhol's eclectic stash. However, a 1972 story in Time [7] offered a different version, describing a drive-by shooting fraught with challenges for a paparazzo: "It has been rumored that ten photographers worked 15 months on or under the waters off Skorpios and that one of them almost drowned."

Whom to believe? Who cares! The discovery of what was obviously a gag gift—she signed the poster-size image, "For Andy, with enduring affection, Jackie Montauk," in a nod to her visits to Warhol's New York estate—clearly conveys that Jackie's vanilla public image covered a wicked sense of humor. It's like a message from Jackie saying that hey, even in my 40s I can be the sexpot if I choose to be ... but you probably couldn't handle it. Famously averse to the paparazzi, she must have known the risks of lounging in the buff on her husband's island of Skorpios, where photographers had flocked in the past. She must have known they would potentially end up in a magazine like Hustler, where 14 of them were published in 1975. (In his book Sex, Lies & Politics: The Naked Truth [8], publisher Larry Flynt referred to the snapshots as "the smartest investment of my life.")

More to the point, Jackie had surely heard about the naked-in-the-water images shot nine years earlier of Monroe, a woman who proudly wore the sultry siren label, whether playing the gorgeous fool in movies like Some Like it Hot [9] or singing "Happy Birthday" to Jackie's presidential husband [10]. A celebrity photographer shot Monroe skinny-dipping as she filmed the first nude scene featuring a major movie star, for a film that ended up unfinished after Marilyn was fired and, soon after, died. And let's just say for a minute that Jackie truly didn't want those snapshots taken of her; she had to have appreciated them to send one to a friend like Warhol with a flourish.

Her poster-size joke was just one more sign that, particularly in her post-Camelot years, Jackie was stronger than the public persona she projected. It was the Jackie who had held it together beautifully after her husband was murdered before her eyes. And who moved her children to New York to begin a new life, rather than seeking long-term solace in the ever powerful Kennedy clan, which would have in some way extended the life of a Kennedy woman that she had begun a decade earlier.

Maybe it's just that we've been too enthralled with tales of the Kennedy dynasty all these years to see the real, multifaceted Jackie O. Now we new generation of feminists have a choice between criticizing Jackie for the kind of woman she should have been, or we can see more of the woman she was when she was completely and utterly herself— the kind who's comfortable enough in her skin to strip off her clothes and spoof her late husband's mistress in a way too smart for most people to notice. That's a kind of sexiness with sly humor, strength, and dignity— the kind that can shakes things up if she happens to be in the mood.

Even the feminist in me can love her for that.