I Love Angelina Jolie

I love Angelina Jolie.

Truth be known, I've had an epic crush on her ever since I saw her in the cult-hit Hackers when I was but a prepubescent teen. Here's another little secret. I've never stopped crushing on her.

But here's the thing. All the recent anti-Jolie hate which has arisen due to her bold choice to have a radical mastectomy has not sit well with me. In fact, quite frankly, it has pissed me off to the nth degree.

Most the people hating on her are completely uniformed. Those few who are informed usually neglect to acknowledge that at the end of the day, it's none of their concern. It's her body. Her right. She is allowed to do what she thinks is best for her. The rest can butt out. 

But that doesn't stop insensitive comments like this one from being made:

"A woman’s breast is the most eloquently powerful and universal symbol of the continuity of Life, and Woman as revered life-giver and nurturer. To convince a woman of Jolie’s status to publicly commit to such a vicious and unwarranted attack on her own body is a misogynisitic master-stroke of epic proportions."

Because, you know, women couldn't possibly be anything but a symbol for child rearing life-givers and nurturers, right?

Women couldn't possibly have minds of their own and, *gasp*, make them up without the influence of men who would seek to tell them what to do with their own bodies.

Sounds exactly like something a misogynist would say, if you ask me.

And maybe some of the criticisms raise valid concerns. But even the best of them come off sounding like Angelina Jolie made a rash decision that's likely to backfire. And that's simply not the case.

What she did was probably more difficult than any of the naysayers can imagine. In fact, I guarantee it. Unless they have had their own mastectomies, I highly doubt they could sympathize to the full extent with what she endured or the reasons why. 

It seems most people are just shocked at the fact that she would cut off her breasts without having cancer. But let's not forget, she based her choice off of hard science. And the science said she had over an 80% chance of developing cancer before her fifty-sixth birthday (she's thirty-eight now). 

Sure, the science could be off, give or take a small margin of error, but this is cutting edge genetics we're talking about. It's highly accurate because the amount of information involved in decoding the genes yields highly accurate results. It seems, given the information Jolie had, she made the right decision.

I commend her on her courage. It couldn't have been easy. 

I see women as people--as equals. It's how I can empathize with Angelina Jolie while her detractors attempt to trivialize what she did--and make it into some kind of controversy when it's clearly not.

In my mind Angelina Jolie is good people. Talented. Smart. Beautiful. Always.