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Why All Ladies Crush on Angelina Jolie
Harper's Bazaar
Harper's Bazaar takes us all to summer school with its July cover story on Angelina Joile.
Instead of a sit-down interview, the mag enlisted famed feminist Naomi Wolf to write about how Angie's the "ego ideal" for the female collective unconscious. Yeah, pretty heavy stuff.
Wolf's essay sets out to explain why every lady—straight, gay, bi—always chooses Angelina when asked who they prefer for some same-sex loving. Or, as Wolf puts it, why "women both identify with her and desire her."
Now, let's get all theoretical about what's going on...and there will be a quiz.
Wolf writes that Jolie is a feminist superhero who actually has it all. And not in the Carrie Bradshaw sense (you know—sex, shoes, fashion, NYC, girls' night out!, cosmos); rather, admired for her sexuality as much as for being a good person and mom.
Examples please, Ms. Wolf:
1. It all started with her early roles like Girl, Interrupted and Tomb Raider, which established her as "sexy and daring, confrontational and independent." That set the stage for everything else.
2. Then she adopted Maddox. "Suddenly, she seemed more mature, more beautiful, and more serious" and made single motherhood look awesome. "She was reframing single motherhood from a state of lack or insufficiency to a glamorous, unfettered lifestyle choice," Wolf suggests.
3. She learned to fly a plane, which is the "ultimate in single-mom chic." Also, Wolf points out that flying a plane is typically a man thing, so Angie is metaphorically making her own decisions without the help of men. Girl power!
4. Then she chose the most perfect man who ever existed and didn't care about whether he was married. Yes, this makes her a homewrecker. But Wolf argues that Brad Pitt looked so good with the kids as the ultimate male role model that Angie was able to get away with it unscarred.
5. Taking Brad as her lover was also Angie's big ef you to society and rules (like don't steal people's spouses). Break it down, Wolf-style: "Jolie's evident disdain of that social constraint certainly, for better or worse, put her in the same self-entitled category as those men who have traditionally taken what they wanted and let the emotional chips fall where they may."
6. And finally, by visiting Afghan refugees in Pakistan and penning op-eds about Darfur in Time, Angelina makes other female stars look lazy with their silly tanning and partying.
And so, Angie is the "ego ideal" for ladies. They can live out the fantasy of achieving ultimate single-mom chic, taking the sexiest married man alive as their lover (consequence free), building a small multi-ethnic baby army and solving the world's injustices—while still being desired sexually throughout it all.
Case closed on the Mystery of the Great Straight Lady Desire for Angelina Jolie.
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