John F. Kennedy was one of the most popular presidents in the history of this country. Now, a surprising traveling quirk of his has just been revealed that gives new insight into how troubled his personal life really was.

In his book “JFK’s Last Hundred Days,” author Thurston Clarke revealed that Kennedy usually travelled with a bathroom scale because he was obsessive about his weight. Kennedy went so far as to avoid swimming in public because he was insecure about his “Fitzgerald breasts.”

This is particularly surprising given the fact that Kennedy was not overweight, standing at six feet one inch tall and weighing 172 pounds. The National Institute of Health states that his weight was perfectly normal for his height, yet he was still obsessive about it.

 

Kennedy’s issues with his weight may have stemmed from the fact that his mother, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, tracked the health of her nine children. Rose would write down her children’s weights, shoe sizes, dental treatments, eye examinations, and illnesses on note cards in an extensive filing system. Rose would often tell Kennedy’s younger sister Rosemary that she was not allowed to eat dessert because she needed to lose weight.

“Rose and Joe [JFK’s father] were concerned about all the kids’ weights,” Kate Clifford Larson, author of “Rosemary, The Hidden Daughter,” recently revealed. “It was a constant theme throughout their whole lives.”

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