It is interesting to note that in biblical times the concept of objectivity in writing was virtually unheard of. People wrote straight from their biases, as though it were utter reality - of course. Had the modern canon of journalistic ethics applied to them, Jezebel would have become a symbol for feminine courage, and queenly comportment under profound stress, at the very least.
She put on the makeup and her best royal finery because she was going to her death, and she knew it. She had only two weapons, and though feeble for any hope of survival, they had a psychological impact, at least. She could 1) die like a queen and 2) make them wait while she prepared an elaborate toilette before going out to meet Elijah. The first took enormous courage and dignity, to make it plain to all that these people were barbarians, killing a queen. The second, "make-em-wait," is a tactic used by women throughout known history, and if that was whorish, then all women are whores.
They murdered her brutally and left her corpse where it fell, rejoicing when the jackals made quick work of all of it but her hands and feet. Nice guys. But they got the kudos in the bible and she was brutally slandered. Because she believed in Astartewhich was a female god, patterned on the much more ancient Great Earth Mother that dated back to the Ice Age, 30-50,000 years earlier, and had lasted as the major spirituality of most people from coast to coast, from Europe to China, during those same 30-50 millennia. She was also a foreigner, from Phoenicia. Both were unforgivable to Elijah; she had to die.
Since future readers took the story as written to be absolutely true, this woman, who was noble and courageous, by any standards of human honor, and who lived up to the finest in queenly behavior, got one of the worst raps in human history.
Most scholars can find nothing to indicate that she was anything but a good and faithful wife to Abel and there is no hint that she even took lovers after she was widowed. The "whore" label hasn't a shred of a basis, but the label and her name have become synonymous, and for several thousand years. It is a gross historical error which really ought to be corrected - and accepted by people who believe those scriptures, too. If fairness matters to them, that is.
The bible applauds many "heroes" who were brutal, such as Joshua, who committed genocide in Jericho, among others. Modern-day believers tend to overlook such minor details, and still praise them. Pity. If we would criticize other people today who flatten tall buildings to kill in the name of their concept of the Almighty, it wouldn't hurt to work on the foundations of our own religious intolerances and absolutism. Continuing to revere people who committed heinous acts in the name of the Almighty in biblical days isn't the best way to go about doing that. We're supposed to have learned a few things since those days. The biblical writers had an excuse for their profound bias; we don't.