Friday, May 17, 2013

Enough already

Biting my tongue and not responding to what's trending on my Facebook and news feeds for 48 hours hasn't cut it. So I haven't posted anything hasty and peppered with typos, but I'm fed up still.

Angelina Jolie is pissing me off.

Admittedly, she had high probabilities to weigh and hard choices to make. But everything else is PR machinery for a boob job. And I'll give top marks for her PR agent for getting her on The New York Times. And sweeping the Australian Budget off their newspaper websites on the same day. Even the British Guardian, which could usually be relied on for acerbic observations, was gushing like a fan girl.

I didn't see that badge of courage pinned on Sharon Osbourne when she had a double mastectomy, and after actually fighting cancer. What, your boobs don't matter when you're middle aged and you're not Lara Croft?

The whole crux of the matter, to me, isn't so much the preventive mastectomy, but making the US$3,000 gene test that she had affordable and accessible to all women. When we all have the resources that she has, only then it's worth gushing over what she's done.


OK, my personal context is that the news of her preventive double mastectomy came two days after news of a friend who had to have a mastectomy emerged with nerve damage from the operation and now cannot move an arm. There is a flip side. There is always a flip side. But nobody is talking about that.

L has the best last words: Let's see if Brad Pitt cuts his balls off. That could prevent a whole lot of things too.

2 comments:

MGW said...

What an interesting perspective. I read about Jolie and went, "Ho, hum, okay, good for her." and never thought much about it. Okay, I did think that because she had lots of money she wouldn't have to worry about how much insurance was covering . . . because, let's face it, you always end up paying a hefty portion. But I never thought about this being a "boob job." Hum.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for understanding. xxx R