Jayne Kennedy Illness: The Hidden Battle That Stopped a Hollywood Trailblazer Mid-Stride

Women who were everywhere and then, all of a sudden, weren’t are surrounded by a certain kind of silence. Sometime in the middle of the 1980s, Jayne Kennedy fell into that silence. For years, the explanations provided by entertainment columns and gossip pages never quite matched the woman who had once worked Sunday afternoons alongside Brent Musburger. It turns out that a body in revolt was the true cause. endometriosis. In recent months, she has been stating it clearly, and the simplicity itself feels important.

According to her own account, the pain was not the kind you endure. Kennedy was at the top of the fitness wave at the time, ranking third in the cultural hierarchy behind Richard Simmons and Jane Fonda. His self-produced fitness program, “Love Your Body,” produced the kind of results that would have made it a long second act. Then she was unable to perform a sit-up. For a brief moment, picture a woman lying on a carpet in Los Angeles, unable to raise her shoulders off the ground, and whose face was selling abdominal strength to millions of people. It’s difficult to look at that picture without finding something subtly heartbreaking.

Endometriosis is a condition that causes tissue that resembles the uterine lining to grow where it shouldn’t. It is notoriously underdiagnosed and frequently ignored, sometimes for years. Kennedy spent over ten years living there. By today’s standards, the treatment her doctor ultimately recommended was almost shockingly direct: getting pregnant. She became pregnant within three months. Although brief, the reprieve was genuine. The illness continued to recur. Eventually, a hysterectomy ended it.

The schedule she maintained while all of this was going on underneath is what’s remarkable. She has stated that she spends 255 days a year traveling, a figure that, when spoken aloud, sounds almost like a punishment. She was the sole female anchor of “Greatest Sports Legends” during its entire existence. She was traveling for Coca-Cola appearances and endorsement deals with Tab and Jovan Musk. Black women were not welcomed in sportscasting in the early 1980s, and she had already experienced a great deal of professional backlash just for her position. She mostly dealt with the burden of chronic illness in private.

Reading her interviews now gives me the impression that her silence wasn’t truly an option. It was the cost of maintaining employability. She has acknowledged that she concealed a 2006 aneurysm for similar reasons, fearing that calling would cease. Hollywood has a limited tolerance for women whose bodies tell stories, both back then and possibly even now.

The entire story is finally written down in her memoir, Plain Jayne, which was published in September of last year. This stretch has been dubbed “Jayne 2.0, full throttle” by her, and it has a slightly defiant edge, the kind of thing you say after being prohibited from saying anything for a long time. At seventy-four, she continues to attend events, consult on the LA 2028 Olympic bid, and hope for the acting role she believes was always meant for her. The sickness is in the past tense. This isn’t the case for the National Endometriosis Foundation, for example.

You get the impression that we are just starting to learn about what these women carried when you watch all of this come to light so late. Kennedy’s public persona was his career. No one covered the body.