Angelina Jolie and the Community Chest

 I think Angelina Jolie has done a pretty brave thing not just by making the decision to take her health into her own hands regarding obtaining a preventive double mastectomy, but also by coming out and explaining why this was the right decision for her. With an 87% chance of developing the disease that painfully and slowly took away her mother, she believes she is sparing herself and her loved ones an agonizing experience, and that is a rational choice, albeit a painful one to make, not in the least because as an actor, her body is viewed as part of her art. The decision was certainly difficult, but she made the choice that she found preferable.

The point being that it was her decision--and yet (and this is somehow predictable, isn't it?) I've read so much commentary about how this was "crazy" and not she's "mutilated" and other remarkably dense things that somehow imply that her breasts, because other people have seen them, have become a kind of community property. As if she should, perhaps, have run a series of polls to make sure that the admirers of her bosom were okay with her deciding that on the whole, she would rather not wait to be diagnosed with cancer before taking care of herself.  The point also being that no one commenting actually has to live with her decision, nor can they imagine what it would be like wondering from day to day whether their own body was likely to betray them.