FOFs are the beauty industry’s most important customers, but no one has ever produced a beauty event just for us.  Till now! The FOF Beauty Bash is bringing together the smartest, savviest and strongest players in the beauty business to give you a first-hand beat on the products, procedures and people that will keep us looking good.

I hope you can make it.  If you do, please make sure to find me so we can meet.

oxo, Geri

I was 16 when President Kennedy was assassinated. His wife, Jacqueline, was only 35, but to a teenager, she was a grownup. Like most every other teenage American girl, I was enthralled with the First Lady. Oh, to be married to such a handsome man, who also was President of the United States.

Jackie moved, talked and dressed with a grace and style that was foreign, but fascinating, to me. I could never get enough of her, and I religiously followed her life, from the White House years to widowhood; from her marriage to Onassis to her editorial career at Doubleday; from her relationship in her FOF years with Maurice Tempelsman to her untimely death in 1994 of cancer, months before turning 65.

Jackie lived a few blocks from me, and I once caught a glimpse of her as she crossed Fifth Avenue, near her apartment. She was wearing a scarf on her head and her legendary oversized sun glasses. She couldn’t really hide from anyone.

Last night, I watched a two-hour documentary about Jackie, based on oral history tapes she made after JFK’s assassination. FOF daughter, Caroline, who only recently listened to the tapes, decided to release them exactly as they were recorded by her iconic mother.

I learned that incoming First Lady, 32-year old Jackie, didn’t at all like outgoing First Lady, Mamie Eisenhower; disdained the arrogance of Frenchmen; thought Khrushchev was a “gangster” who “could do whatever he wanted with Jack;” wanted the whole family to die together if the Cuban Missile crisis blew up; really loved Lady Bird and liked LBJ, but wanted to make sure he didn’t take credit for President Kennedy’s accomplishments; didn’t understand why aggressive women, like Claire Booth Luce, had a “queer thing for power;” thought she was the one “Jack loved,” even though she knew he played around mercilessly.

When Jackie told Jack that she couldn’t stand Texas Governor, John Connolly, he responded: “If you say you hate someone, you’ll act like you hate them the next day,” and advised her not to think that way.

“No one we know has a better sense of self,” Ted Kennedy said of Jackie at her funeral service, held at a church a block from my apartment. I took off from work that day to watch mourners enter the church. Although the blocks surrounding the church were cordoned off to the general public, I caught a glimpse of JFK Jr. as he entered.

Thank God Jackie wasn’t around when her son died. She had enough grief when she was 35 to last a lifetime. She was a class act every step of the way.

She’ must be with both her JFKs now! It’s fun to think about it.

FOF sister, Shelley, and I took the train to Hartford, CT. yesterday, so we could check out an event called the Women’s Expo. On the way to the Expo Center, I asked the taxi driver if he’d  stop at Kent Street. That’s where my grandma Rosie and grandpa Sam lived when I was growing up and I have fond memories of my visits. There were two types of excursions, either a weekend visit with my parents and two sisters or alone for an extended stay.

I slept in grandma’s living room, on the odd-shaped forties sofa, when the whole family traveled. The makeshift “bed” wasn’t especially comfortable, but  still, I loved making myself all cozy on a cold winter Saturday night, while all the grownups sat around the dining room table gabbing about goodness-knows-what and having coffee and cake.

I slept in a real bedroom when I visited my grandparents, sans family, often over Christmas vacation. One holiday, grandma and I were consumed with finding an outline map of Europe, because I had ruined the one I was supposed to color in for my homework project. I was in 6th grade. After we traipsed over every street and into dozens of stores in downtown Hartford, with no success, we returned home, where I sat in her big kitchen, distraught. How would I ever be able to do my project?

It suddenly occurred to grandma that her cousin, a teacher, might have an outline map. Happily, he did. When I brought it into the kitchen to start my coloring, grandpa suggested that he do it for me. He had artistic talent, so I gladly agreed. Grandpa used a different watercolor for each country and wrote in their names with his beautiful printing. I gazed at the map for years. I wish I had kept it.

When the taxi driver stopped today in front of grandma’s house, I looked up at the living room windows and thought about my nights on the sofa, just beyond them. I also thought about how much my grandparents loved me. The last time I saw the house was about 35 years ago, when my widowed grandma moved to New York to be near her daughter (my mother) and her son. The street looked as I remembered it and the house was repainted and in good shape.

Grandma's living room windows are the ones behind the satellite contraption

Hartford is a dramatically different city than it was a half century ago. When we reached the Expo Center, Shelley turned to me and said: “I imagined that we’d go into grandma’s house and she’d be there.”

Maybe she is.

I’ve “closed my eyes” a number of times in my life when I wasn’t asleep! I sensed (or knew) something or someone wasn’t right for me but I chose to ignore my instincts, even the facts. I wanted to believe someone was really a friend, even though she often acted more like an enemy. I wanted to believe a man was the love of my life, even though I abhorred his behavior much of the time.  I wanted to believe that it was safe, even beneficial, to take estrogen year after year, although study after study indicated otherwise.

Why do we undermine ourselves by staying in hurtful, destructive, and sometimes life-threatening situations? Perhaps it’s a lot harder to face the music and make moves than to sit still and stay silent.

I spoke to a 41-year-old, successful entrepreneur yesterday, who recently had her divorce finalized. She met her husband when she was 16, and although she remains friends with him, their marriage had been disintegrating for years. “If I didn’t get out now, I’d never leave,” she told me.

Better late than never. Yep. Better late than never.