She posed for a glamour shot on the jacket of her book, “The Beauty Myth,” that attacked media exploitation of women. She famously advised Al Gore to wear earth tones. Last year, she called the tasering of that University of Florida student (“Don’t tase me, bro!”) “an iconic turning point and it will be remembered as the moment at which America either fought back or yielded.”
Clearly, Naomi Wolf is an idiot. The evidence continues to mount; this essay, about Angelina Jolie, is as nauseating a piece of celebrity worship as you’ll ever read.
The magic of Jolie’s self-presentation? She makes the claim, with her life and actions, that, indeed, you can get away with it. All of it. Against every Western convention, she has managed to draw together all of these kinds of female liberation and empowerment. And her gestures determinedly transgress social boundaries — boundaries of convention, race, class, and gender — giving many of us a vicarious thrill.
