The Tamesis
Those of you who are aesthetically inclined and spend a lot of time online will notice that Caroline Bessette Kennedy fandom is currently permeating pop culture. Ryan Murphy’s new collection reignites and amplifies fascination with the late Calvin Klein publicist, Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Caroline Bassetttraces her tumultuous romance with JFK Jr. to their eventual deaths in a 1999 plane crash.
In some ways, interest is predictable. Bessette-Kennedy is exactly the kind of woman the algorithm likes: beautiful, charming, married to the president’s son. Silky blonde hair and ’90s cropped pants are a natural on TikTok. But two things elevated her from mere fashion icon to something akin to a mythical figure: her violent death and her disdain for the media. The sudden end of a story already thin on detail leaves a vacuum that the internet rushes to fill in an endless cycle of understanding and reconstruction.
Famously – as dramatized in the latest episode love story– Bessette Kennedy didn’t like being watched. She reportedly quit her job at Calvin Klein after seven years, in part because the constant paparazzi attention made it unbearable for her to even walk to the office. There are almost no videos of her online, and even fewer where her voice can be heard. A collection of short clips of her speeches has been viewed nearly 500,000 times on TikTok. The top comment read: “I really wish there was an interview with her.”
It was Bessette Kennedy’s mystique, her privacy—her refusal to give the public what they wanted—that so captivated people. JFK Jr. reportedly did love story: “I love that you don’t feel the need to please me or anyone else,” Kennedy told her during their infamous post-fight reconciliation in episode five.
In an age of reality TV and influencers, when the default attitude is one of celebrity and virality, Bessette Kennedy’s disdain for fame is a rare and special thing. Would we care about Bessette-Kennedy the same way if she posted a ten-part truth on Instagram and linked her strappy black pumps on Shopify? She’s not asking you to like her, buy her skin care products, or follow her on YouTube. Of course she wasn’t; she died 27 years ago.
At the heart of the frenzy is a terrifying fact: Bessette-Kennedy’s archive is limited. There are only so many photos. Dozens of photos show her strolling the streets of Lower Manhattan. Her wedding was held in a chapel on a remote island in Georgia, and fewer and fewer people survived. The scarcity of primary material explains part of the show’s appeal: it’s new material for an old craze. Murphy created the access the public had desired for decades. But even that well will dry up.
Ultimately, this obsession has begun to eat away at itself due to a lack of truly new material. Searches for “Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy” on Pinterest increasingly yield approximations rather than the woman herself: AI-generated photos of JFK Jr. and Bessette-Kennedy at their wedding, from a 2023 Sporty & Rich campaign inspired by the couple. In her absence, online attention is inevitably disconnected from the “real Caroline.”
This brings us to a paradox: without a living, breathing subject to anchor the image, the image becomes entirely internet-like. You can see it in the content. One TikTok asked Bessette-Kennedy if she would use Lord’s skin care products. Another wondered if Kendall Jenner was the closest contemporary. Online guides speculate on which restaurants Bessette-Kennedy would frequent today.
These are all attempts to reimagine Bessette Kennedy in the world of 2026. But no amount of Prada shoes, Egyptian musk perfume or CO Bigelow’s tortoise-shell headband can bring Frankenstein back to 1999. The internet may break her into physical parts, but Bessette Kennedy herself is irredeemable. Even in life, she is out of our reach. Of course, that’s the point.
