Posted by Irresponsibility
Poor Brad...
The press has been devoted to proverbially kicking Angelina in her perfect white teeth almost from the moment she hooked up with perennial pretty boy Brad. Not out of any personal animosity, I assumed, but because it made a nice script. Hapless ‘can’t-hold-a-man’ Aniston with her tame blonde hair and tight smile versus ex-druggy-lesbian-vamp brunette bombshell Ang whose lips pout unspeakable things. Convenient means of reinforcing jaded stereotypes while endless reprinting photos of beautiful women. Newsstand gold.
Things have taken a turn for the much-nastier in the last couple of years though. There was always an undercurrent of hostility for Angelina. She is too outre to be truly welcomed to the Puritanical bosom of middle-America. The press grudgingly played nice while she was safely pregnant and hanging dutifully on Brad’s arm all the time, but at the first whiff of imperfection it unleashed the hounds.
Striking, but not surprising, is that the carping is entirely anti-Ang. Brad is emphatically cast as the victim (much as Jen was in the initial go-round). “Brad’s Misery” shouts the cover of a recent Us Weekly. Inside, half a dozen pages are devoted to hand-wringing about a potential break-up with Angelina firmly cast in the Queen Bitch role.
“She’s a perfectionist and a control freak. She screams and badgers him about everything,” a ’source’ alleges. Her reputed nastiness extends to disagreeing with him about politics and wanting to “watch what the kids eat”. Cruel harridan that she is, Ang even “disapproves of Pitt’s penchant for spending money on art and architecture”. Que horror – “helping the poor is her biggest priority”.
I can’t help but applaud that final comment. It takes serious editorial chutzpahto cast helping the poor as a BAD THING. But standing obediently by your man is the ultimate feminine public service.
The upshot of this is that Brad is “increasingly [miserable]” — a construction which is as bizarre as it is fascinating. Brad is not a child. He is an exceedingly rich, powerful, famous, talented, grown-up 46-year-old man (12 years Angelina’s senior). Isn’t it a little insulting make him into a victim? I think so, but I don’t write for the tabloids. Angelina, on the other hand, gets almost no sympathy. There is mention that she is “exhausted and … overwhelmed” but that comment is immediately followed by “despite the stress, Jolie still wants more kids”. In other words, don’t feel sorry for her, she brought it on herself.
Even if every word of the tittle-tattle is true, which is far from certain, the construction of the story is plain vicious. If Angelina really is a tearful, screaming, controlling hellcat why isn’t the press asking about her unhappiness? Why does she get null points for being a working mother-of-six while the tabs lick Brad’s boots every time he takes the kids out for a burger?
It’s the script. Now that Angelina is no longer protected by the first flush of romance, the media has thrown its lot in with Team Aniston, cramming pages with unsubtle speculation about the golden exes possible golden future. In this particular fairytale Prince Charming was wooed away from his true love by a curvaceous wicked witch. Now with her ‘true nature’ revealed he longs for nothing more than to fly back to the chaste arms of his gold-tressed princess.
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