Angelina Jolie stunned the world earlier this month when she revealed in a New York Times editorial that she’d undergone a preventative mastectomy after finding out she has a faulty BCRA1 gene. It was later revealed that she will also have her ovaries removed to eliminate her chances of cancer there, as well. All of this is quite fascinating (and heartbreaking), and since it’s coming from one of the world’s biggest stars, the press has gone crazy trying to secure that exclusive interview with Angelina about everything that’s happened. Well, dream on, guys – she’s not going to talk.
From The New York Post:
Not even Ann Curry could curry favor with Angelina Jolie for an interview with the actress about her voluntary double mastectomy. We hear NBC pushed the network news correspondent to get the first television chat with Jolie, following her shocking announcement last week that she’d had the surgery. But Jolie’s turned down Curry, and every other news outlet, for now. The NBC journalist had a long-standing relationship with Jolie and Brad Pitt, having interviewed them several times. After Curry was fired from the “Today” show last year, Jolie made it known that she wouldn’t speak with anyone else at the network. NBC declined to comment last night.
Leave it to the Post to put an annoying spin even in a single paragraph “story”. Was Angelina Jolie’s mastectomy “voluntary”? Yes, insofar that doctors didn’t force her to undergo the procedure. When you consider that she had an 87% chance of getting breast cancer – which killed her mother at an early age, by the way, dufuses – then it becomes less voluntary and more self-preserving.
In any case, good for Angelina for not doing interviews about it. I don’t think anyone with a working heart or brain could say that she’s done any of this for attention, but choosing to speak out about it as she did initially was so important as it empowered other women who may be in the same position to not only be more proactive in their own health, but also perhaps to feel a sense of, you know, maybe I’m not alone in this. It’s a shame that our culture looks to celebrities for comfort, but it happens, so everyone get over it. It certainly doesn’t need to turn into a media circus, however, and good for Angelina for opting out of doing so.