If you haven't had a chance to read Naomi Wolf's article in Harpers Bazaar, "Why Women Want Angelina Jolie's Life", you should really make the time. You may have seen a blurb about it online, but blurbs, not even words, can describe the over-the-top nature of each and every sentence, each and every word. Naomi Wolf's devotion is absolutely absurd and will unfortunately, further fuel the Brangeloonies, Brad and Angelina worshippers who clog the comments section of celebrity sites around the world with their undying love for a spoiled and self-indulgent couple none of them will ever meet. Their obsession with Jolie in particular, seems almost unnatural. And they are not alone. Devoted to a carefully constructed public relations character that is not part of this world or in fact part of anything resembling the real world in which real women live, Ms. Wolf describes Jolie in breathless detail, as a badass angel sent from the Gods, in fact greater than any God that ever existed, or something like that. Seriously, you have to read it. I'm going to laugh, and possibly cry, for the rest of the week just thinking about it.
Of course Ms. Wolf and many of Angelina's rabid fans, in their maniacal devotion to this false prophet, think Angelina is a feminist icon because they gloss over or fail to recognize that Feminism is in many ways, Dead. I say this with a heavy heart, and with a certain measure of generalization. Of course there are feminists who still roam among us, but they have been sidelined, replaced by hot, trendy super-moms who, with the right amount of money, can 'have it all'. Not much has changed in the messages society forces upon the women of today than those that existed hundreds of years ago.
1. Find Prince Charming
2. Make babies
The 2009 version, a slickly re-packaged marketing ploy, now complete with trendy strollers and $1000 diaper bags, is this:
1. Find a man, any man will do, because nothing is worse than being a woman without a man.
2. Make lots and lots and lots of babies. It's all the rage. Everybody's doing it and you want to be cool, don't you?
3. Get thin. Just stop eating, it's so much faster than going on a diet.
4. Get beautiful, boxtox, surgery, whatever it takes.
5. Don't get old, and by old, we mean 40.
Angie's young, "hot", anorexic and turned her uterus into a clown car, so of course our male-dominated media and more than a few fake feminists love this woman. Like a more glamorous version of Kate Gosselin, Jolie embodies the death of feminism like no other celebrity out there. Young girls know Paris Hilton is not a feminist so she is in many ways, less of a threat to the future of feminism than those parading around pretending to possess feminist ideals, whatever those are, something to do with hotness and having it all I suspect. Feminism is not about how many people want to sleep with you or how many children you can collect from third world nations. In reality Angelina's 'effortless' life that Wolf claims all women desire, would not be possible if it were not for her looks and the millions of dollars at her disposal. Sure we'd take the money and a night of passion with Pitt, but six kids and a diet consisting of water and the occasional bite of food, not really. Sure there are women out there who want Angelina Jolie's life. Just ask Jolie's biggest fan, Octomom.
Ms. Jolie's rise to the top of the celebrity food chain was swift and calculated, and more traditional than Ms. Wolf would have you believe. After "Tomb Raider", Ms Jolie was slipping into oblivion, trapped in a wasteland of weird behavior and box office duds. People were losing interest in her and it wasn't until she became a mother and she started making babies with Brad Pitt, the Hollywood version of Prince charming if there ever was one, that people began to really notice her latest re-invention of herself, a conveniently timed re-invention that must drive Jennifer Aniston crazy. Ms. Aniston of course, met Prince Charming and famously threw it all away for her career and only wanting two kids. Two kids? So very 1990's Ms. Aniston. Instead of giving her husband that soccer team he always wanted, she took her time, enduring the wrath of women everywhere and public pressure from Pitt who found an understanding media industry happy to hear his constant whining, as if his wife and her womb were simply a stepping stone to his larger, more important dreams. He's Brad Pitt after all and she's a sitcom actress who should be honored that he was even interested in her in the first place. A man usually protects his wife from a lynch mob, they don't usually send a lynch mob of reporters chasing after her with "When are you going to have a baby, when are you going to have a baby!" "How dare she!!!" "He was right to leave her, he was right to cheat on her." Now that Aniston is single, childless, forty and still struggling under the weight of spending each and every hour of each and every day being compared to the most fabulous woman to ever walk the earth, she might as well just kill herself. I'm sure Jolie would be more than happy to let Aniston peruse her knife collection if necessary.
Ms. Jolie, often described as an independent woman who doesn't need a man, especially a married one as she once claimed, gladly turned her uterus into whatever Pitt desired before his divorce was even finalized, happily announcing he pressured talked her into biological children and proudly suggesting she was taking hormones to speed up the process. In modern 'feminism', respect for the sisterhood, is frowned upon, it's now a competitive sport, each woman for herself. In fact if you can take down another woman clawing your way to the top even better, because men, and more than a few women, love those cat fight fantasies, something about girl on girl porn if you ask me.
What Ms. Wolf fails to understand is that Angelina Jolie needed a man, in this case Mr. Pitt, to make her into a global phenomenon, to help her build the pedestal she, and he, now uses to smugly look down on other women and other people in general. Before him it was Billy Bob Thornton who helped her generate media buzz and before him, it was her father who opened the doors that got her into Hollywood in the first place. Without these men in her life, without seeing herself through the eyes of men, without men desiring her, no one would even know who this self-righteous, unstable, manipulative woman even is. 'She takes what she wants.' She got away with it all,' is Ms. Wolf really serious with these 'complimentary' observations? Yes, I'm afraid she really is. Why feminism means behaving as badly as men do equates equality, is something I will never understand.
Ms. Wolf, often described as a third wave feminist, whatever that means, needs to get a grip on the true meaning of feminism, instead of hammering another nail in the coffin of a movement that has resorted to idolizing hot chicks people want to have sex with. That is not feminism, Ms. Wolf, that is a sad statement about the current state of feminism. Last month Ms. Wolf was singing the praises of Helen Gurley Brown, another modern 'feminist icon' that promotes traditional female roles by re-packaging them as female empowerment. As editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, Ms. Brown made a fortune with articles about how to land a man, how to keep a man, how to please a man, ten steps to a better you because the current you isn't good enough. If Wolf, Brown and Jolie are the future of feminism, it's time to give feminism another name.
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Joan Walsh
Kerry Lauerman
Salon.com
Comments
Men go to bazaars with a wolf named harpie?
I notice small detail. A Lady in the market went on a vacation. She said she would be back in two weeks. When she returned from her vacation She had a makeover. She was pleasantly proportioned. Then, She had 38's! I saw cleavage! I didn't dare ask how did your breast implants go? I am wild eyed! I did say something about her freckles she had on her bare shoulders and upper torso. Seriously.
I like real breast. Tiny or naturally sagging. My eyes went blinking. Are men supposed to comment? Should I say anything on a market day? Who is your podiatrist? You seem more cuddling? You got the renovated look? Whoopee! wow wow. You want to go out? You will go sunbathing with me ?
Males get embarrassed.
DC's is see cleavage city.
I get a excited by ankles.
I thought Brad P. had it made with that other nice Lady.
Oh, way behind the times. I am slow at keeping abreast.
I can be non-audible. Jolie Angelina likes honey meads?
I'm out of here!
chase butterfly!
no capriciously!
Still this piece was funny funny....FUNNY
i'll be laughing at the uterus/clown car reference for weeks, i'm guessing
highly rated
Everything Jolie has done has been with the help and agreement of the men in her life and she can only have all these babies with the 4 nannies she employs. It's easy to have babies when you don't have to get up to feed them. Rated.
consider studying evo-psych. everything makes a lot more sense incl archetypical stories like jennifer vs angelina vs brad.
you say jennifer only wanted 2 kids & was postponing pregnancy. oh really? how do you know she is fertile? she's had no kids.
not excusing brad pitt, only analyzing.
now jolie, I agree with you that she's not much of a feminist in the honorable sense. but its not the media per se that is telling you to
a) find a man
b) have babies.
its your GENES. for good reason.
those that succeed in a+b do not always do so honorably, and in fact sometimes the dishonorable strategies win out. sorry!!
some more musings on evo-psych in my blog
and it would make sense-- two expert actors, who expertly portray themselves as happily married in public.
so yeah, at least a good feminist role model ought to be able to sustain a good relationship, or have a track record of having pulled it off. the really rabid feminism tends to disparage men & argue they are unnecessary. old joke: "a women needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle"
Feminist role model - of course not.