Just seven years ago, the New York Observer ran a story with the title, "Actress Roles Over 40? 'It's a Big Fat Zero." My, how times have changed: Today the Hollywood Reporter has a piece about how actresses over 40 are dominating the September covers of the major fashion magazines. Writer Doree Shafrir (with whom I co-wrote a book) notes that the most of the summer blockbusters this year did not star neophytes: Fortysomethings Sarah Jessica Parker, Julianne Moore, Tina Fey, and thirtysomethings Angelina Jolie and Cameron Diaz were all over the multiplex.

One of the magazine consultants Shafrir interviewed for the piece reasons that Elle, Vogue, and co. are choosing older women for their covers because we're in a "post-recession era" during which "consumers are drawn to the authentic, down-to-earth and relatable." You can certainly use the recession to explain any new trend, but I believe there is evidence that the shift is more permanent and less economy-based. For the past few years, there have been incredibly strong, high-profile roles for non-ingénues popping up on television—from Edie Falco in Nurse Jackie to Glenn Close in Damages on the dramatic side, and on the comedic end of things, Tina Fey on 30 Rock and Amy Poehler in Parks and Recreation. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before people realized that these sorts of heroines could attract a devoted audience—and started putting them on the big screen, too.

Tags: actresses over 40, Angelina Jolie, cameron diaz, eat pray love, elle, julia roberts, sarah jessica parker, Vogue

Who knows what to believe when it comes to celebrity "journalism," but it's apparently been confirmed that Angelina Jolie will adopt a child from Syria—something described on the website of the U.S. embassy in Damascus as "a difficult process and often an impossible one." In many countries, celebrity status probably has little effect on adoption matters, but in a country where adoption is "essentially illegal," the perverse effect is that anything pretty much goes—if you've got the required currency. Cash, glamour, celebrity, or all of the above clearly come into play.

In countries that are large players in international adoption, like China, Korea, and Kazahkstan, hard and fast rules apply, designed to protect both the child and the adoptive parent. Placing children through an elaborate system is meant to prevent corruption, kidnapping, and blackmail, and although there have been notorious failures, in general it works. In countries where adoption is handled privately, there's far more room for almost any kind of trouble you can imagine, but if you can get past the initial barriers to entry, there are advantages—if you're Angelina. Most countries place some limit on the number of children in a family. None would allow only one parent in a married couple [correction: or partnership] to adopt a child, as the Daily Mail reports is happening here, and all also require substantial investigation into whether a family is ready in various ways to adopt—although it's hard to imagine a social worker refusing to endorse Jolie.

In other words, Jolie may not be qualified to adopt in the standard way, particularly if it's true that her partner [husband] isn't on board. So one possible objection to this adoption is clearly correct: It's not fair. But it's hard to argue that a child would be better off in an orphanage than as part of the Jolie clan, or that she won't grow up better off. An orphaned Syrian girl has few educational opportunities in her future and very limited social options. I also find it hard to argue that the addition of another mouth to feed is going to change much for the family, other than in the way any sibling does. They're a large, unusual clan at either six or seven, and whether they're being raised by nannies or by Jolie and Pitt, their life is what it is. If Jolie wanted to have another baby, she could. If she feels like she can cope with another child—and with her partner's [husband's] unease, if that part of the story is true—then man, good luck to her. I have four kids under 8, and I couldn't do five, but I'd never say there aren't plenty of people out there better at this than me.

Correction: The original post implied, incorrectly, that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were married. The author--while noting that no less a source than Star Magazine steered her wrong--regrets the error.

Tags: adoption, Angelina Jolie, Syria

Who knows what to believe when it comes to celebrity "journalism," but it's apparently been confirmed that Angelina Jolie will adopt a child from Syria—something described on the website of the U.S. embassy in Damascus as "a difficult process and often an impossible one." In many countries, celebrity status probably has little effect on adoption matters, but in a country where adoption is "essentially illegal," the perverse effect is that anything pretty much goes—if you've got the required currency. Cash, glamour, celebrity, or all of the above clearly come into play.

In countries that are large players in international adoption, like China, Korea, and Kazahkstan, hard and fast rules apply, designed to protect both the child and the adoptive parent. Placing children through an elaborate system is meant to prevent corruption, kidnapping, and blackmail, and although there have been notorious failures, in general it works. In countries where adoption is handled privately, there's far more room for almost any kind of trouble you can imagine, but if you can get past the initial barriers to entry, there are advantages—if you're Angelina. Most countries place some limit on the number of children in a family. None would allow only one parent in a married couple [correction: or partnership] to adopt a child, as the Daily Mail reports is happening here, and all also require substantial investigation into whether a family is ready in various ways to adopt—although it's hard to imagine a social worker refusing to endorse Jolie.

In other words, Jolie may not be qualified to adopt in the standard way, particularly if it's true that her partner [husband] isn't on board. So one possible objection to this adoption is clearly correct: It's not fair. But it's hard to argue that a child would be better off in an orphanage than as part of the Jolie clan, or that she won't grow up better off. An orphaned Syrian girl has few educational opportunities in her future and very limited social options. I also find it hard to argue that the addition of another mouth to feed is going to change much for the family, other than in the way any sibling does. They're a large, unusual clan at either six or seven, and whether they're being raised by nannies or by Jolie and Pitt, their life is what it is. If Jolie wanted to have another baby, she could. If she feels like she can cope with another child—and with her partner's [husband's] unease, if that part of the story is true—then man, good luck to her. I have four kids under 8, and I couldn't do five, but I'd never say there aren't plenty of people out there better at this than me.

Correction: The original post implied, incorrectly, that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were married. The author--while noting that no less a source than Star Magazine steered her wrong--regrets the error.

Tags: adoption, Angelina Jolie, Syria

Daniel Edwards—the celebrity-obsessed sculptor who has already blessed the world with Britney Spears giving birth on a bearskin rug and Suri Cruise’s bronzed poop—has just announced his latest work: A statue of Angelina Jolie, enthroned, majestically nude, and suckling a baby at each breast like it ain’t no thang. Weird? Sick? Magnificent? I can’t really tell.

According to the press release, the work—commissioned in honor of World Breastfeeding Week—was inspired by Jolie’s W cover from last November. Though Jolie’s two-handed pose looks awfully precarious to me, apparently she is demonstrating the " ‘football-hold,’ an accepted technique for breastfeeding two babies simultaneously.” Best tidbit:

In recognition of the global effort to encourage breastfeeding, one twin is depicted as being of African descent. Future castings of the statue will represent other world cultures through variations of the babies' patina coloring.

Edwards’ most recent paean to motherhood is the hot pink “String of Babies,” a limited-edition, flexible polyurethane rendition of Nadya Suleman as a baby-bedecked cephalopod.

Photograph of Daniel Edwards discussing his statue of Angelina Jolie courtesy of the sculptor.

Tags: Angelina Jolie, breast-feeding, daniel edwards, Octomom

I was intrigued by Willa Paskin's take-down of Naomi Wolf's latest in Harper’s Bazaar and entirely primed to read an annoying "absurd, overwrought, swooning love letter to Angelina Jolie, the woman who, in Wolf’s analysis, most fully embodies "having it all," as Paskin put it. But I think Wolf actually has a point. Jolie has managed to successfully create an archetypic persona, Wolf writes, "one that really, for the first time in modern culture, brings together almost every aspect of female empowerment and liberation." To put it more directly—she manages to successfully combine a vast array of different female archetypes that have historically been seen as being incompatible with each other.

Wolf writes:

So you can be respected as a symbol of goodness (Florence Nightingale, Mother Teresa) but not, obviously, be seen as sexual. You can have a hot sex life (Marlene Dietrich) but not at the same time be seen as a symbol of goodness. You can't get away with it. (Somehow, when an icon who was at once both a sexual being and engaged in good deeds died in a violent accident—Princess Di, of course—the story had a kind of terrible narrative inevitability.) You can take a lover—and even be a home wrecker—but not claim the hope of being seen as a good mom (Madame Bovary, Elizabeth Taylor). You can't get away with it. You can have money, fame, and a dazzling career, but you must surely be depressed, drug addicted, lonely, or self-destructive (Jacqueline Susann, Marilyn Monroe). You can't get away with it.

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.

But you don't have to look to historic figures like Dietrich or Monroe or Nightingale to see famous women still struggling to combine it all. Just look at Sarah Palin.

Like Jolie, Palin flies a plane, has a greater than average number of kids, a good-looking husband, beauty-pageant good looks, a hair and make-up team (at least during the campaign), an international profile, and the ability to command extraordinary levels of media attention. Unlike Jolie, however, Palin cannot seem to get away with anything. Some of this may be the result of their handlers—Jolie, as the far richer of the two, can afford more people and appears to have a more sophisticated media team for her arena than Palin does for hers—and some the result of their different politics and lifestyle choices. Some of it likely has to do with their different manners of speaking—folksy versus sophisticated—and Jolie's greater gift for mythmaking self-display, as well.

But a large part of it, surely, has to do with the fact that, as women have transitioned into new roles over the past century, we've wound up with two systems in which they can operate—what I've come to think of as the system of power and the system of beauty. Most actresses succeed first within the system of beauty, moving later into roles where they take on other forms of power as directors, studio owners, or crusaders for various causes.

Most women in politics, in contrast, begin within the system of power—a system from which women have historically been excluded. Jolie may look like she's "got it all," but she's still combining mainly female archetypes as an emissary from the system of beauty. And she's most prominently an international spokeswoman for children who are displaced victims of conflict—the kind of work traditionally done by first ladies more than presidents. (That's not to say she's not having a powerful impact; my friends in the international development arena tell me she's had one.) She dresses beautifully, is a clothing spokesmodel, a movie star.

But Palin is a governor—the first female chief executive of the most male-dominated state in the nation—and was trying to be the first female vice president. She has tried and still tries to meld archetypically masculine roles with traditionally feminine ones while contending for prominence within the system of power—a much tougher challenge, and one that leads to things like cracks about her "slutty flight attendant" look from the likes of David Letterman (among many other things). Remember the controversy of Hillary Clinton's hint of cleavage? Or how the then-Mary Bono traded in her long California hair for a severe brunette 'do after taking her husband's slot in office? (She's since let it grow long again.)

Women in politics by and large practice the politics of physical negation, where an early goal is finding a look that's pleasantly unremarkable, so people can focus on the words and work. There are consultants who work with women leaders around the globe to help them find these happy middle-grounds. The higher they ascend, the more the problem created by the simultaneous need for erasure and visibility recurs.

In the past, there has been chatter about Jolie toying with a bid for office. It would be a true test of her abilities if she could make the transition to the much harsher system of power while preserving her present persona. I suspect, however, even she would have trouble holding all her archetypes together if she did so.

Tags: Naomi Wolf

In this month’s Harper’s Bazaar, Naomi Wolf has penned an absurd, overwrought, swooning love letter to Angelina Jolie, the woman who, in Wolf’s analysis, most fully embodies “having it all.” It’s just about impossible to read this piece and simultaneously remember that Wolf is a serious feminist and thinker. She has bent her erudition to the plainly ridiculous, plainly thankless task of explaining that, because Angelina Jolie is a symbol of both goodness and sexiness, she is a better, more complete woman than Mother Teresa, Florence Nightingale, and Elizabeth Taylor. Apparently, if Mother Teresa had made time to screw hotties between her busy orphan-caring schedule she would be as awesome, important, admirable and transcendent as Jolie. Seriously, this article is hilarious.

Wolf’s not the first writer to postulate that Angelina Jolie is the world’s most superior female. (For those of you who watch Battlestar Galactica, at least we can be certain she's the world’s most likely cylon). Back in 2007 Esquire ran a cover story on Jolie that drooled, “One could make the argument that she is the most famous woman in the world. Why not, then, just go ahead and make the argument that she is the best woman in the world, in terms of her generosity, her dedication, and her courage?” Rather than respond, “Uhm, Why Not? Are you kidding?!” Wolf has opted to further Esquire’s cause. Jolie is, in Wolf’s estimation, the “’Ego ideal’ for women—a kind of dream figure that allows women to access, through fantasies of their own, possibilities for their own heightened empowerment and liberation.” And here I thought she was just a pretty cool, pretty thoughtful movie star. My mistake.

What is it about Jolie in particular that inspires this sort of heightened drivel? In the presence of a celebrity who is not a totally useless, self-involved sack of shit must magazines start spewing the most deranged hyperbole? Why must Jolie be “the best,” instead of just what she is, a famous person who is aware of the larger, deeply troubled world?

Just for fun, I want to leave you with the paragraph that made me cough up my orange juice:

Then there is the plane. Women are so used to being dependent on others (certainly on men) for where they go, metaphorically, and how they get there. Flying a private plane is the classic metaphor for choosing your own direction; usually, that is a guy thing to do, yet there was Jolie, with her aviator glasses on, taking flying lessons so she could blow the mind of her four-year-old son. That is the ultimate in single-mom chic: Even before she had reconstructed a nuclear (or postnuclear) family with a dad at the head of it, she was reframing single motherhood from a state of lack or insufficiency to a glamorous, unfettered lifestyle choice. Paradoxically, having done so, she makes the choice of a man to help her raise her kids seem like one option among many for a self-directed woman rather than either a completion of a woman or a capitulation.

Did you get that single moms? If you want to be the "height of single mom chic"—And who doesn't!— time to start coughing up the cash for private flying lessons and babysitters. The most superfantastical woman in the universe flies planes and, if we're serious about being women, and serious about being feminists, we all must try to be more like her.

Tags: Angelina Jolie, feminism, Naomi Wolf, Perfect Woman

In this month’s Harper’s Bazaar, Naomi Wolf has penned an absurd, overwrought, swooning love letter to Angelina Jolie, the woman who, in Wolf’s analysis, most fully embodies “having it all.” It’s just about impossible to read this piece and simultaneously remember that Wolf is a serious feminist and thinker. She has bent her erudition to the plainly ridiculous, plainly thankless task of explaining that, because Angelina Jolie is a symbol of both goodness and sexiness, she is a better, more complete woman than Mother Teresa, Florence Nightingale, and Elizabeth Taylor. Apparently, if Mother Teresa had made time to screw hotties between her busy orphan-caring schedule she would be as awesome, important, admirable and transcendent as Jolie. Seriously, this article is hilarious.

Wolf’s not the first writer to postulate that Angelina Jolie is the world’s most superior female. (For those of you who watch Battlestar Galactica, at least we can be certain she's the world’s most likely cylon). Back in 2007 Esquire ran a cover story on Jolie that drooled, “One could make the argument that she is the most famous woman in the world. Why not, then, just go ahead and make the argument that she is the best woman in the world, in terms of her generosity, her dedication, and her courage?” Rather than respond, “Uhm, Why Not? Are you kidding?!” Wolf has opted to further Esquire’s cause. Jolie is, in Wolf’s estimation, the “’Ego ideal’ for women—a kind of dream figure that allows women to access, through fantasies of their own, possibilities for their own heightened empowerment and liberation.” And here I thought she was just a pretty cool, pretty thoughtful movie star. My mistake.

What is it about Jolie in particular that inspires this sort of heightened drivel? In the presence of a celebrity who is not a totally useless, self-involved sack of shit must magazines start spewing the most deranged hyperbole? Why must Jolie be “the best,” instead of just what she is, a famous person who is aware of the larger, deeply troubled world?

Just for fun, I want to leave you with the paragraph that made me cough up my orange juice:

Then there is the plane. Women are so used to being dependent on others (certainly on men) for where they go, metaphorically, and how they get there. Flying a private plane is the classic metaphor for choosing your own direction; usually, that is a guy thing to do, yet there was Jolie, with her aviator glasses on, taking flying lessons so she could blow the mind of her four-year-old son. That is the ultimate in single-mom chic: Even before she had reconstructed a nuclear (or postnuclear) family with a dad at the head of it, she was reframing single motherhood from a state of lack or insufficiency to a glamorous, unfettered lifestyle choice. Paradoxically, having done so, she makes the choice of a man to help her raise her kids seem like one option among many for a self-directed woman rather than either a completion of a woman or a capitulation.

Did you get that single moms? If you want to be the "height of single mom chic"—And who doesn't!— time to start coughing up the cash for private flying lessons and babysitters. The most superfantastical woman in the universe flies planes and, if we're serious about being women, and serious about being feminists, we all must try to be more like her.

Tags: Angelina Jolie, feminism, Naomi Wolf, Perfect Woman