[ed. As have many other extraordinary women. By the way, the so-called 'cancer gene' BRCA1 can be detected with a blood test and women with a family history of breast or ovarian cancer should consider getting tested.]
Of course, Angelina Jolie is not the first actress to have had a mastectomy, that most medical of terms referring to the removal of at least one of the anatomical attributes that actresses are expected to hoik up for the sake of their career. In fact, off the top of my head, I can name four: Christina Applegate, Olivia Newton John, Lynn Redgrave and Kathy Bates have all publicly discussed their mastectomies.Nor is she the first to have a preventative double mastectomy: Sharon Osbourne (not an actress but very much a woman in the public eye) announced only last year that she had one after discovering, as she told Hello! magazine, that she had "the breast-cancer gene".
Yet while Jolie may not be the first, she has done something that is – by any standards – pretty extraordinary and brave, even on top of having a preventative double mastectomy. She is certainly the highest-profile woman to make such an announcement in a long time, and she is arguably one with the most at stake. For a young, beautiful actress to announce that she has had her breasts removed is, as career moves go, somewhat akin to a handsome leading man announcing he is gay, and that is disgusting and ridiculous on both counts. Ultimately, she has challenged not just her own public image but also the wearisome cliche of what makes a woman sexy, and how a woman considered to be sexy talks about her body.
Judging from her clear, calm and plain-speaking article in the New York Times discussing why she elected to undergo a double mastectomy, Jolie views publicising her decision as simply a matter of public service:
"I chose not to keep my story private because there are many women who do not know that they might be living under the shadow of cancer. It is my hope that they, too, will be able to get gene tested, and that if they have a high risk they, too, will know they have strong options," she writes, while acknowledging the issues of financial access that prevent too many women from getting tested and treated. (...)
That breasts do not exist just to turn on other people will not come as a surprise to any sentient adult human being. Nor, it should go without saying but sadly does not, do breasts make the woman. But brutal, mature reality does not generally have much of a place in the fantasy land where the myths of celebrities and public perception intermix. In fact, in this fantasy land of celebrity puffery and tabloid nonsense, Angelina Jolie was, only 24 hours ago, still, in the eyes of the media, the sex-crazed, blood-drinking, man-stealing seductress (albeit one with six children) that she has been pretty much since she came to the public eye decades ago. In fact, only last weekend I read an article – and I'm using that term in the loosest sense – claiming that Jolie was so adamant to have her wedding before Jennifer Aniston's that she and Brad Pitt had already booked a "romantic getaway honeymoon" for themselves. Now we know that, contrary to looking up "sexxxxxy hotels" on the internet while having mind-blowing sexy sex, Pitt and Jolie have actually been otherwise engaged at the Pink Lotus Breast Center, while Jolie was being treated for her double mastectomy. Rarely has the disjunct between celebrity gossip rubbish and the actual truth looked so ridiculously exposed.
by Hadley Freeman, The Guardian | Read more:
Photo: AP
