Yahoo Finance This Might Be the Best Angelina Jolie Headline of Them All
Read any headlines about Angelina Jolie recently?
Sure, she’s won an Academy Award, has brought characters like Lara Croft to cinematic life, and immortalized late supermodel Gia Carangi onscreen. But since 2001, Angelina Jolie has also traveled to more than 30 war-torn countries as a goodwill ambassador, helping refugees, the homeless, and victims of sexual violence. It’s safe to list “human rights activist” above “actress” on her resumé.
Yesterday, the Mail & Guardian decided to flip the script accordingly, reporting on Jolie’s newly announced split from Brad Pitt with the headline “Globe-trotting Humanitarian Angelina Jolie Files for Divorce from Actor Husband Brad Pitt.” The article wasn’t meant to be snark, but rather a thorough news piece detailing everything we know about the filing, to date (Jolie wants full physical custody of the couple’s six kids, she cited “irreconcilable differences,” TMZ reports she was “extremely upset” over Pitt’s parenting methods) — and more.
The story strays from the well-worn gossip path, opting to take a more substantive approach and delve into the details of Jolie’s humanitarian work. It talks of her refugee-related work in countries including Afghanistan, Sudan, Tanzania, Iraq, and Jordan.
And the article highlights another significant and impressive aspect of Jolie’s life, which made headlines recently: her brave and controversial medical decisions. “To encourage other women to explore their options, Jolie spoke out publicly about her elective surgeries in 2013 and 2015 to have her breasts, ovaries, and fallopian tubes removed as a preventive measure due to a family history of cancer,” the Mail & Guardian reminds readers.
The article ends by highlighting Brad Pitt’s most notable film roles. In fairness, though, it’s worth mentioning that Pitt has done his share of humanitarian work — notably his involvement in the One Campaign, which battles global poverty and AIDS — as well as his environmental and political activism.
Other publications have made clever efforts in the past to note the accomplishments of women who have married or divorced famous actors. One of our favorites came from New York magazine’s the Cut, which ran the headline “Former Robotics CEO Married Trophy Boyfriend Joseph Gordon-Levitt” when announcing the actor’s nuptials to “genius multilingual futurist Tasha McCauley” (if only they’d run a picture of her too!). As the Cut mentioned, “McCauley co-founded a robotics company in NASA’s Research Park in Silicon Valley, where she was the interim CEO in early 2014.” Gordon-Levitt wrote, directed, and starred in “Don Jon,” so there’s that!
And how can we forget the union of Amal Clooney (née Alamuddin) to George Clooney? After his long-running streak of monogamous relationships with a parade of actresses, waitresses, and former pro-wrestlers, Clooney shocked the entertainment world by marrying the extraordinarily accomplished lawyer, author, and activist.
Or, as the Business Women Media accurately put it, “Internationally acclaimed barrister Amal Alamuddin marries an actor.” The first line of the tongue-in-cheek (kind of?) article read, “Amal Alamuddin, a London-based dual-qualified English barrister and New York litigation attorney who has long been a high-profile figure in international refugee and human rights law, has gone against the trend for professional women in her field and married … an actor.”
Again, in fairness, George Clooney has been a prominent political activist (see: his involvement with the Darfur conflict), supporter of gay rights, and awareness-raiser of the Armenian genocide. So, you know, he’s no slouch. It’s likely he wasn’t intentionally a “confirmed bachelor” for long; he was just waiting to meet “his Amal.” We should all be so lucky.
Most importantly, this kind of coverage helps keep things in perspective when it’s so easy to fall back on old-fashioned portrayals of “wives” and “husbands.” No, headlines like the Mail & Guardian‘s are not about dogging Pitt or downplaying his noble accomplishments. They aren’t even about knocking acting as a profession. With reports of the Jolie-Pitt split saturating the media, it’s just refreshing and empowering to see publications reminding us that Jolie is not a damsel in distress. She’s a strong, accomplished woman, humanitarian — and yes, actress — going through a family tragedy, publicly.
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