Julia Fox's Halloween Costume is Jackie Kennedy When JFK Was Assassinated, Including the Blood Stains. As a Tribute. Or Something.

Paul Archuleta. Getty Images.

I won't pretend that Julia Fox has ever pinged my pop culture radar before now. After all, there are a lot of actresses, tons of Julias, and the world has more than its share of Foxes. I mean, she may have crossed the outer range of my brain's perimeter, but didn't pose enough of a threat or generate enough interest before today. 

So I did a little research using the best damned resource the world provides, which is the one you're currently reading. Most recently when Devlin took a deep dive into her (yes, I hear myself) this past summer:

A quick perusal of that post taught me two things. First, she's dated Kanye. Second (not surprising given the first thing) she has a predisposition for posing outrageous outfits. And mean that in the objective sense. In that she likes to wear outfits that are outrageous:

… and also meant to cause outrage:

Or this one, which I'm not posting. Click the link if you're not at work, in polite company, or eating. You've been warned. 

Those were the least surprising things to learn about a celebrity if, like me, your introduction to her was her Halloween costume. Which is a historic and beloved American icon, covered in the blood of her husband, the then-President of the United States. Which Julia Fox was inspired to do as … a tribute? Homage? Acclaiming Jackie Kennedy for her courage and bravery?

I’m dressed as Jackie Kennedy in the pink suit. Not as a costume, but as a statement. When her husband was assassinated, she refused to change out of her blood-stained clothes, saying, ‘I want them to see what they’ve done.’ The image of the delicate pink suit splattered with blood is one of the most haunting juxtapositions in modern history. Beauty and horror. Poise and devastation.

Her decision not to change clothes, even after being encouraged to, was an act of extraordinary bravery. It was performance, protest, and mourning all at once. A woman weaponizing image and grace to expose brutality. It’s about trauma, power, and how femininity itself is a form of resistance. Long live Jackie O ♥️ 

Well OK, then. Not the choice many people would make. And by "not many" I mean, not more than just Julia Fox. I can't imagine there have been many moms in the past 62 years who've been picking out just the pink dress, pillbox hat and gone as Jackie for school pageants where you dress up like a historical figure the way the wear the Ruth Bader Ginsburg robes today, it's a safe bet none of them ever opted to make the dress look like a literal crime scene. 

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To Fox's credit, she's not wrong. Jackie steadfastly insisted on wearing same dress while Lyndon Johnson was being sworn in on Air Force One. And since this was decades before the invention of OxyClean, she was still, in fact, covered with her husband's viscera:

Keystone-France. Getty Images.

Which begs the question: Is this tribute to the courage of a strong woman? Or patently offensive and in terrible taste, given the images we have from that day? 

For that matter, can it be both? After all, the one argument you can't make against Fox's choice is, "Too soon." The whole reason people like me are demanding the release of every page, paragraph and word of the JFK Files is because everyone in them is dead. So what's the Statute of Limitations on turning a gruesome moment into a Halloween costume? Would anyone be outraged if you did Lincoln? Marie Antoinette? Julius Caesar? How far back do you have to go before it's just a costume? After all, Steve Irwin was killed on September 4, 2006. And the Halloween parties that year were lousy with Crocodile Hunter costumes. 

Personally, I think this outfit Fox went with is in bad taste. But I'm all for erring on the side of allowing for bad taste costumes. You have to allow some lines to be crossed. It's part of the grotesque fun of the holiday. Where that line is, has to be in the eye of the beholder. Once you start policing that stuff, it will never end. (That said, if you're one of those people I've seen on X wearing the same t-shirt Charlie Kirk was murdered in covered in blood, you truly need to do some soul-searching. If you have a soul.) One of my favorite costumes at the Barstool Wicked Halloween parties Dave use to throw in the 2000s was a guy dressed as headless Ted Williams with his severed head in a frozen canister in his arms. Teddy Ballgame is like a secular saint to me, but clever is clever. 

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Even though Fox's deal is gruesome, I'm going to cut here slack and say she does make a point about Jackie Kennedy. Besides, it's getting her the attention she seems to be craving all the time. So it's Mission: Accomplished on both counts.