Angelina Jolie has written an eloquent op-ed piece for the New York Times.
It’s about losing her own mother to cancer and how she did not want her children to be at the same risk of losing theirs. She also explains the process of the double mastectomy.
Is it possible that the most beautiful woman in the world is not vain?
Ever since the Queen in Snow White asked ‘mirror mirror on the wall – who is the fairest of them all?’ it has been hard for me to separate that image from Angelina.
In the film Se7en, a beautiful victim of the serial killer John Doe was also a victim of the deadly sin of vanity. After he cut off her nose to spite her face, it turned out she would rather die than call for medical help and live a disfigured life.
But maybe Angelina’s recent surgery to reduce the chance of breast cancer from 87% to 5% proves that even the most beautiful women are not necessarily victims of their own beauty.
And while beauty can be attributed to genes – so can cancer.
It may also be easy for cynics to point a finger at the timing of Angelina’s release of this information about her medical journey as a ploy to assist her partner’s promotion of World War Z – a $200m film that was plagued with production problems getting to the big screen. That early box office is important to return on investment and Brad Pitt is doing all he can to get behind it such as a world PR tour that even includes Australia which might take him away from her side at a critical time in their lives.
But that would be a harsh point of view to take. After all, no one on the planet is capable of such media spin doctoring.
And despite the love-but-all-business relationship between the House Of Cards TV show characters played by Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright Penn, it’s hard for me to believe that in the real world, that level of love and business balance can be achieved without knowing the third act of everyone’s life story well in advance. I mean, our lives aren’t scripted like in the movies, right?
What do you think?