Is Jolie the Next Feminist Icon?
Naomi Wolf thinks so. But what would she be without the boobs and lips?
Jolie, from brother-kisser to saint.
"Oprah Winfrey is dead. Long live Angelina Jolie," trumpeted one paper last week. In this year's Forbes' rankings, kind of like the Stanley Cup of celebrity competitions, Jolie deposed Winfrey's long reign as monarch of fame. She whooped some serious head-of-state heinie too: Obama was the top-ranked head of state, but with his paltry $2 million annual salary, he came 49th.
Since the win, plenty of people have been weighing in about why Jolie now wears the crown. After all, the new queen is a mediocre actress in "movies full of abrupt transitions and overblown characters." Winfrey makes 10 times Jolie's salary. And though Jolie is a UN ambassador and all, it's not like she has a real job. She plays make believe for a living, and collects children and houses.
Figuring out why certain people become mighty, even though they're almost identical to other people who live in normal obscurity, is arguably some of the best sport there is. So it's no surprise that the celebrity academics are suiting up. And in this month's Bazaar, heavyweight third-wave feminist, Naomi Wolf, Rhodes Scholar and author of the Beauty Myth, who most recently postulated on the hairy legs versus high heels debate in "Who Won Feminism," weighs in on how Jolie has risen from her awkward near-Goth beginnings to being the most desired person on the planet. Wolf's essay occasionally verges on fandom, or at least overt admiration, but that's maybe because she sees Jolie's win as a feminist triumph. Either that, or she's just been reading too much Perez Hilton.
In Bazaar's cover story, "The Power of Angelina," (the other headlines offer such delights as 525 new ideas to revamp your look, but never mind that), Wolf says it's because Jolie is the new embodiment of having it all -- something women have never actually been able to pull off before.
"She has created a life narrative that is not just personal," writes Wolf. "Rather, it is archetypal. And the archetype is one that really, for the first time in modern culture, brings together almost every aspect of female empowerment and liberation."
Beauty on the outside, actually
Wolf's first theory: um, Jolie is gorgeous. "Bosomy and wasp-waisted, with that curtain of hair and those crazy pillowy lips, she is an obvious male sex fantasy." But equally interestingly, polls show that her "appeal and magnetism play at least as powerfully in the fantasy life of females." Straight, lesbian and bisexual women would choose Jolie, if they had to choose a female lover. You know how the saying "women want to sleep with him, men want to be him," gets applied willy-nilly to powerful, attractive men? Well, in this case, women and men want to sleep with her, and women want to be her.
The reason for the lady lust, according to Wolf, is that Jolie has become what psychoanalysts call an "ego ideal" for women -- "a kind of dream figure that allows women to access, through fantasies of their own, possibilities for their own heightened empowerment and liberation."
Wolf argues that until now, patriarchal civilization has managed to convince women that identity is a series of high-stakes either-or choices. You're a virgin or a whore. You're a mom or a home wrecker. You're successful in your career or you're feminine.
But Jolie not only has it all, she does get away with it. And that gives her audiences a vicarious thrill.
Single motherhood rebranded
After starting out in the public eye as a slightly odd, brother-kissing, blood-vial-wearing sex symbol, she started to emerge when she became a single mother who didn't seem to need a partner (financially or otherwise) in order to be able to be a parent. A quarter of American households are headed by single parents, often portrayed as sad, poverty-stricken and pathetic, and Jolie turned that it into a "fairly radical, vision... that made the relationship seem tender, glamorous, and complete, father figure or no father figure in the picture." She re-framed single motherhood "from a state of lack or insufficiency to a glamorous, unfettered lifestyle choice." I wonder if it's easier to be a single mom if you're a millionaire? Hmm. At any rate, "paradoxically, having done so, she makes the choice of a man to help her raise her kids seem like one option among many for a self-directed woman rather than either a completion of a woman or a capitulation."
As selfish as any man
That man, Brad Pitt, also adds to her mega-power, given that he's "the male seen as the most desired of the tribe, who is always ranked at the top of indexes of male beauty and virility," (though eight spots behind her on the Forbes list). It wasn't a given that he would: her scarlet-letter infraction, her "megascandal," her alleged seduction of him while married (to a celebrity with an American girl-next-door sweetheart persona no less) could have discredited her completely. But she turned the home-wrecker label into a "wholesome, family-friendly triumph." Shortly after she and Pitt got together, on the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, there were photos of her new uber-partner (formerly childless) playing football with Maddox, her adopted son.
And in the end, "Jolie's evident disdain of that social constraint [of falling for a married man] 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."
Wolf then argues Jolie "kicked her career into overdrive" when she started doing public appearances (and work apparently) in aid of stricken women and children worldwide. Then Brangelina's rapid adoption of additional children, though problematic for many reasons, in my opinion, "certainly stood out in a raft of narratives of stars who simply shop, tan, and go into rehab."
I am woman, hear my plane roar
Oh and "then there is the plane." Yes, she flies. Her own plane. Because women are usually "dependent on others (certainly on men) for where they go, metaphorically, and how they get there, the plane " is the classic metaphor for choosing your own direction."
But as other feminists have pointed out, Jolie is still not much more than a sex symbol, "a pornographic feminist fantasy," who talks.
Look, I get that Angelina Jolie does some volunteer work and gives money to charity, and sure I'm pleased about that. Just as I am that someone is rebranding single motherhood, and that a celebrity with some conscience beats out others like Paris Hilton. But does she match Oprah when it comes to personality or service?
Jolie's win shows that men and women's fantasy female is built primarily from boobs and lips. Is Jolie really all that knowledgeable about world politics (like Wolf)? Of course, we don't even really know what she is knowledgeable about: Jolie is a professional pretender, a blank canvas for our projections.
Maybe we shouldn't declare that women can now have it all. Unless, of course, we're willing to admit that's our fantasy of choice.
Related Tyee stories:
- Spears as Whore, Jolie as Saint
Why teen mothers keep getting shocked up by the media. - Is Breeding a Sin?
Only if you have a litter, and happen to be poor. - $11 Million Twins
Brangelina is in the business of making us look. Does evolutionary psychology explain why it's impossible to look away?
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
sunshine coast girl
09-06-2009
Angelina Jolie
is a waste of space. She is not an icon of modern day feminism. And if she is we should be ashamed. There is absolutely nothing of value to her. She stole another woman's husband (not that he is by any means innocent). She collects children like trophies and pays other people to look after them (except during photo shoots). She has a non-existent relationship with her own father. You can bet her appearances on behalf of women and children isn't for free. About the only thing she does that is fairly admirable is act not too badly. Big deal. She has a ginormous carbon footprint; what with jetting around the world and maintaining her however many houses in however many countries. She moves her kids around like checkers on a board so they don't have any routine or stability. She blows disgustingly outrageous amounts of money on those children and herself. I certainly hope that none of the young girls I know idolize her. She is not a good role model. Not impressed.
nechakogal
09-06-2009
you've come a long way baby!
Jolie is a profitable product that elicits an emotional response - to say this product epitomizes the new feminism is taking us full circle back to the "Torches of Freedom" where women's freedom was equated to lighting up a cigarette. It's toxic, just toxic. Yikes perhaps Freud was on to something?
MichaelT
10-06-2009
no.
no.
dave49
10-06-2009
NO!
MichealT put it succinctly. No.
Angelina Jolie is on a lot of magazine covers and keeps the gossip/celebrity journalism industry very busy.
Yes, she is beautiful, her husband handsome and she is not following the usual script. However, don't impute cultural significance to her level of celebrity. Recall the observation of Daniel Boorstin, "The celebrity is a person who is known for his/her well-knownness."
wayfarer
10-06-2009
Talk about rebranding...
Forget about Jolie rebranding single motherhood, the real story here is the Tyee's apparent attempt to rebrand itself as a mainstream online magazine! Good grief! Between this story and yesterday's TMZ-style gossip pap by Bill Tieleman, I can only guess that the Tyee is facing some serious financial issues, seeking ways to become more mainstream without appearing mainstream.
I hope this is just an anomaly.
lynn
10-06-2009
Oh the humanity!
I think this is a good article for what it reveals about the lightweight choices of "heavyweight third-wave feminist".... and glitterati-groupie, Naomi Wolf."
Proof that:
We've got a long way yet to go, baby.
Or at least Ms. Wolf does.
VivianLea Doubt
10-06-2009
hmmmm...
I've always thought Naomi Wolf's writing is gorgeous and lush - not sure she's a lightweight, Lynn.
Wolf is arguing something that is undoubtedly true - what used to be called the madonna/whore demarcation, woman was either one or the other - and though female story roles have changed, little has changed in gender role. Just try being sexy in the boardroom, hey? Faster than you can say glass ceiling you'll be relegated to HR or some obscure department, although you may still get asked out on dates. Wolf argues that Jolie is an archetype, not a role model - and maybe she's on to something here that is really positive. Because, truth be told, how do we separate ourselves from our sexuality?
Anyway, the positive I see in Wolf's POV is that perhaps for the first time in decades there is a genuine shift in the frontier of the possibilities for women that I would see as the very essence of feminism - the freedom to choose for oneself, not to have one's life story plotted - one's sexual choices, one's motherhood (or not) choices, one's career choices - in advance by someone else's definition of 'good girl'.
Saying that Jolie is an archetype is not the same thing as holding her up to be someone we emulate - the archetype is not about her "boobs and lips" but about the fact that she can choose. I want to CHOOSE for myself, and I want everyone else to CHOOSE for themselves, too. Vanessa wants us to believe that we could all CHOOSE if we only had Jolie's looks, or money - or even her gorgeous man - but Naomi says we can all CHOOSE anyway. I'm with Naomi. I CHOOSE.
Jeffrey J.
11-06-2009
Interesting Mix
Great to see debate about women and their many roles in our society. Discussion of almost any aspect involving 50% of our population has value. The exception, which is quite significant, is the press originating from chauvinistic, thinly veiled misogyny. But that's another story.
When assessing contrasting views by literate, thoughtful authors like Naomi Wolfe and Vanessa Richmond, we are challenged. Because there is no question neither are closet chauvinists. So the simple answer that one is favouring the male chauvinist narrative of America doesn't apply. So what to do?
In the end, after some thought, my vote goes with Ms. Richmond's concerns. Why? Hollywood, while empowering some women, has by and large been dominated by purely male, economic, financial forces. And such forces symbolize all that is wrong with power and oligarchs. The ultimate question for Ms. Wolfe is can women in Hollywood "reform from within". This is the same question for any person concerned with social justice, and whether existing structures will EVER permit reformation from within. The evidence is against this hypothesis.
In the end, Hollywood symbols like Angela Jolie will probably do less for women's equality, inspite of their significant fame.
Great discussion!!