What she did

This is what I wrote about in The Widow's Chronicle, that you should come here and read this abbreviated account of what Angelina Jolie has done.

 

I don't ordinarily write about celebrities. That's because I don't care a lot about them or take them seriously as people. Sorry. Is that blind and closed-minded of me? Oh well.

But today I write about one of my least favorite celebrities, Angelina Jolie. Least favorite, I suppose, because her face, her family, her alleged good acts (charitable), have been shoved down our throats for about a decade. And I have grown weary of seeing her face everywhere I go. Their faces--hers and Brad's.

However, Angelina Jolie has done something extraordinary. That was the headline. Without the however.

Indeed she has. She has had a preventive double mastectomy, just as Sharon Osbourne did. Osbourne had discovered she carried the breast cancer gene, BRCA1. So does Angelina Jolie, whose mother died from breast cancer at age 56. Angelina mourns her own loss and the loss her children suffer because they will not know their grandmother. So, she had the mastectomy to preserve her own life but not only for her own sake, I believe. For her family.

But the extraordinary part is not simply the mastectomy, it is her publicizing of it as, she says, a public service. To let women know that breasts are not the only definition of their womanhood. To offer comfort to those who have had the surgery. To provide example and resource for other woman. I have to commend her for that.

Certainly to make public this surgery and not to leave it at "a surgery," is risky, given her status as sex symbol/dramatic actress. Dramatic actress doesn't always involve breasts, I suppose, but often. And sex symbol in Hollywood means breasts. No?

We shall see how the movie industry responds to her now. My response is this: I am sorry she and others have had to do this, and I admire her courage. I'll have to remove the least-favored label.