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Angelina Jolie, scion of Hollywood beauty, has gone under the knife for medical, rather than cosmetic reasons and guess what – it’s news! Angelina’s double-mastectomy, undertaken because she carries the BRCA1 gene which doctors have estimated gave her an 87% chance of having breast cancer, and a 57% chance of having ovarian cancer, is pretty radical news.
Our pop icons, our actors and our stars, seem almost immune to the petty, dirty tragedies affecting the rest of the world. Sure, their weight goes up and down, they get pregnant and adopt, they get married and get divorced, but rarely do they get cancer, which is a macabre and threatening shadow reserved predominantly for small bald children who are told to smile when some idiot shows up in the middle of their chemo for a photo-op. Kylie Minogue, Jade Goody and Barbara Ehrenreich are high profile women who have suffered through breast and ovarian cancer very publicly, but I can’t remember a female star of Jolie’s caliber ‘coming out’ about a preventive double mastectomy. As The Guardian writes “Health campaigners praised her decision to go public with the news, which she said was prompted by a desire to encourage other women to get gene-tested and to raise awareness of the options available to those at risk.”
Woah, woah! Let’s hold back a little. What exactly has she done that deserves praise? She wrote about an invasive, often brutal medically (un?)necessary procedure which 56% of women with breast cancer in the US choose to undergo. Hands up everyone in the US who hasn’t heard of breast cancer and mastectomy! Anyone? Umm, anyone….?
OK. So now, thanks to Jolie, we’re MORE aware. And guess what? There are really, really expensive tests you can get which tell you beforehand how likely you are to get cancer and die! Hands up who knew about that one? Oh, quite a few of you? Mainly the ones who can afford it, am I right? The ones who can’t afford it – well what good is knowing that there’s a test out there only privileged rich people can get?
Jolie claims, in her stilted Op-Ed in The New York Times, that she wants to “bring awareness” to breast cancer, and specifically expensive screening tests which can calculate one’s likelihood of getting it. Ah, that old chestnut! When one can’t be arsed to do shit, make a statement and “bring awareness” to something. The Susan G Komen foundation, the Pink Ribbon Brigade and its horrendous pink walks designed to raise money for expensive and ultimately ineffective breast cancer “cures” at the expense of examining prevention highlight the absolute inefficacy of “raising awareness” as a means of combating a disease or reducing one’s risk of carrying it. The problem is, Jolie herself seems utterly unaware of what carrying the BRAC1 gene, and what having a high probability of breast cancer, means for most women in the US. She writes: “I want to encourage every woman, especially if you have a family history of breast or ovarian cancer, to seek out the information and medical experts who can help you through this aspect of your life, and to make your own informed choices.”
Really, Angelina? You honestly think that the 27 million (20%) of women in the US who don’t have health care, and the 77% who apparently have it, but still have to forego care because they can’t afford it even with insurance — you think that your Op Ed is actually going to do anything for these women except remind them that they don’t have access to the expensive screening tests you seem to think people don’t undertake simply because they haven’t read your article?
Do you think even if these women know they have the BRAC1 gene, that they can go to the extremely expensive Pink Lotus Breast Center for not one, but three “preventive” procedures, including nipple delay, mastectomy and expert breast reconstruction, which while some women who have had mastectomies have found to be absolutely essential for their recovery and self esteem, are rarely available on any kind of insurance because its deemed unnecessary plastic surgery?
Jolie gives a trifling nod to the 77% of women in this country who probably can’t afford more than a Pap smear and a breast exam at Planned Parenthood when she writes:
Breast cancer alone kills some 458,000 people each year, according to the World Health Organization, mainly in low- and middle-income countries. It has got to be a priority to ensure that more women can access gene testing and lifesaving preventive treatment, whatever their means and background, wherever they live. The cost of testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2, at more than $3,000 in the United States, remains an obstacle for many women.
No, Angelina, it does not remain an obstacle for “many women” in the United States. It remains an obstacle for most women in the United States. Why don’t you raise our awareness of your own overpriced, privileged medical treatment a little more, and continue to NOT raise awareness of any actual fact? Facts like ashkenazi Jewish women have a higher chance of carrying the BRAC1 and 2 mutations than other ethnic groups? Facts like double mastectomies are not always the most effective way of preventing breast cancer for at risk individuals, and that other treatments – surgeries, screenings, monitoring, medication – are available and can be more more appropriate depending on a woman’s specific case? What about highlighting the other affordable and effective ways women can keep an eye on their health – through free Pap smears, breast exams and mammograms provided by their local Planned Parenthood? Why don’t you acknowledge that many breast cancer deaths could have been prevented by free and available access not only to screening tests, but to Pap smears, mammograms and cancer treatment? Why don’t you write about the charities out there who are striving to provide women with affordable treatment in the US – like the Breast Cancer Relief Foundation? Why don’t you “raise awareness” of the fact 40% more black women are likely to die of breast cancer than white women, that black women are more likely to get more aggressive cancers, and be denied access to healthcare due to their socio-economics?
The Guardian, ever optimistic in its adoration of dumb Liberals, quotes a female cancer patient from the UK, Wendy Watson, who founded the UK’s National Hereditary Breast Cancer Helpline. Wendy, of course, safe in her NHS bubble, welcomed Jolie’s decision to write publicly about her operation.
“It is excellent, because it is the highest profile you can get for it,” she said. “It raises the profile for other women to look to if they have a family history and would benefit from being screened more frequently, or having surgery or having a genetic test,” she said. “She probably feels that undergoing the operation is common sense but it probably does take a certain amount of courage to face it.”
Hey Wendy, listen up! The US doesn’t HAVE A NHS! Women sure would benefit from being screened over here, but that ain’t news! You know what would be news? A Hollywood star with Angelina’s profile and power actually highlighting how fucking disgraceful the United States healthcare system is, rather than waxing lyrical about her own fucking bravery and encouraging women to plop down 3k they will never, ever be able to afford on a test to see how likely it is that they’re going to die from a disease they won’t be able to get adequate treatment for.
You know what, Angelina. It sounds like you’ve had a hard time recently. I guess I can forgive the complete absence of awareness in your privilege-denying Op-Ed, because after all, it’s hard to understand that some Americans – yes, not only black and brown Americans, but white ones too! – can be just as deprived as those brown people in foreign countries you’re so invested in “saving”. When the fuss has died down about your elaborately reconstructed chest and your incredible bravery in submitting to top-end, essential preventive treatments in order to avoid a painful and abhorrent death, perhaps you’ll do the decent thing and spend some of your vast resources on addressing some of the issues you seem pretty ignorant about right now.
In Loving Memory of Mavis and Stephanie – women who weren’t afraid to be pissed off.
Ruth Fowler is a journalist and screenwriter living in Los Angeles. She’s the author of Girl Undressed. She can be followed on Twitter at @fowlerruth.
Melbourne.
Popular culture, and celebrity, have come to this. A well-endowed personality, a figure of celluloid appeal, has to justify to the other-worldliness of an action personal and specific to the person in question. That a woman has to have a mastectomy brings with it pains within and without – not merely the challenges to her body but her family and friendship circle. In the case of celebrity, that procedure assumes the form of confession – after all, the circle in that case is the vaguely defined public.
For Angelina Jolie, a conflict between medical necessity and career comes into play. A personal decision, and one that is costly in various ways, becomes a public platform, a soapbox of encouragement for individuals who, in all truth, do not have the power, let alone the means, to make those decisions. One has to laud Jolie’s decision to have a mastectomy as one would any woman who has to make choices that affect not merely her own life but the lives of others.
The superficial nature of acting, being itself mimetic, demands superficial responses. So, while Jolie cuts her changes of having cancer from 87 percent to under 5 percent, she, goes the speculation, might also be cutting her chances of being perceived as beautiful and appealing. “RIP Angelina’s boobs” is a crass but typical statement of the spectatorship of celebrity. The implication here is how her marketability has been affected.
Often celebrity is seen as a set of variables and pieces of the popular imagination. It comes with its full set of equipment – Marilyn Monroe’s vacuum-styled lips, Greta Garbo’s glacially beautiful face. Tamper with these and one tampers with appeal. Think Jolie, think Lara Croft with weapons holster and, yes, breasts. The sense that she might actually be flesh and blood is simply beside the point – her career choice, as it were, was to mimic life rather than live it.
Actors and actresses pay that ultimate price – they are the sounding boards of life, though some scholars looking at the celebrity phenomenon find celebrity as a space of realisation, the vicarious playground for others. Celebrity is “us”, claims Anne Helen Petersen, who attempts to make celebrity gazing scholarly. “What we talk about when we talk about celebrities is, as ever, ourselves.” One would certainly hope not.
Commentators have rounded up on that cost, not in monetary terms, but aesthetic ones. “Some suggested that her medical emergency was just a tabloid ruse to cover up elective breast implants,” observed Amanda Hess in Slate (May 14). The snark factory had started to churn – she had received a “boob job”; she would never be watched again sans breasts. Among the trolls, Jolie was merely consumable. But the sad reality is that the moment one stands in front of screen and script, one becomes consumable. This is an unpalatable phenomenon, but hard to dispel. Celebrity is its own worst distortion.
Perceiving that to be the case, Jolie’s New York Times confession piece, with the title “My Medical Choice,” asserts that, “On a personal note, I do not feel any less of a woman. I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity.” She does also admit that breast reconstruction can take place, “and the results can be beautiful.” The point of deprivation, it would seem, is reversible with a full and capacious wallet.
Let us speed to the crunch then, something far more fundamental than the actress as commodity. “For any woman reading this, I hope it helps you know you have options.” We know immediately that the pitch is to a very different audience, one able to “shop” for options, search for the finest procedures, and find the best solutions to prolong life. If you have medical insurance, you will be saved. “I want to encourage every woman, especially if you have a family history of breast or ovarian cancer, to seek out the information and medical experts who can help you through this aspect of your life, and to make your own informed choices.”
Jolie is not ignorant about cost, even if cost for her was not an object. “The cost of testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2, at more than $3000 in the United States, remains an obstacle for many women.” What she fails to mention, as Jillian Berman points out in The Huffington Post (May 14) is that a Salt Lake City based biotech company by the name of Myriad Genetics holds patents on BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Little surprise that the same company produces a product – BRACAnalysis – that tests for mutation in those genes that increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer.
Certainly, everyone wants a piece of Jolie (no pun intended). Maureen O’Connor, writing in New York Magazine (May 14), see this as an act of responsibility. Her New York TImes article had to be celebrated. “When the world’s most famous actress advocates for preventive women’s medicine, the message goes too far.” She has also transformed herself “from enfant terrible to responsible mommy.” (She can reassure her children that she will not be lost to breast cancer) Then, the clinching rationale for O’Connor – “former Lara Croft, Tomb Raider refuses to equate breasts with femininity.” The very mention of busty Lara Croft, that the figure should hold sway with O’Connor as a remotely meaningful motif, is itself revealing. Being feminine and being a celebrity are hardly the same thing, even if there is an artificial convergence.
The sum of these parts is simple. No one should decry Jolie her choices. She made them with family and life in mind. You might even say that she did what she had to do. They were “informed” in so far as she had the medical means to obtain that information. But most importantly, she did have those choices. The challenges that should not scare us, claims Jolie, “are the ones we can take on and take control of.” Many simply do not have those means, and any audience receiving her wisdom should realise that it comes with a heavy bank balance, medical insurance and Brad Pitt by your side.
Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/15/the-commodification-of-breasts/
The world exploded with praise and awe when actress Angelina Jolie announced – via op-ed in The New York Times – that she had undergone double-mastectomy as a preventative measure after discovering that she possessed the mutant BRCA1 gene. A mutation to either the BRCA1 and/or BRCA2 (both named for BReast CAncer) genes seems to confer an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer in its carriers.
As the scourge of cancer has permeated the American landscape – one in two men and one in three women will develop cancer in their lifetimes – diagnosis and treatment have become the sole allowable precautionary procedures. Every day we learn more about the myriad of known and probable human carcinogens saturating our built environment. In addition, scientists are continually revealing the long-term, intergenerational, and epigenetic health effects of exposure to these ubiquitous chemicals. Yet, on our insidiously poisoned planet, our insistence to continue with business as usual has led us to a form of collective insanity. We now choose bodily mutilation as a means of dealing with the diseases of our global industrial culture, rather than confronting the root causes.
In a 2003 study published in the esteemed academic journal Science, researchers found that among women carrying the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, cancer “risks seemed to be increasing over time.”[i] In other words, those born before 1950 only had a 24% risk of developing breast cancer by age 50, while those born after 1950 had a 67% risk. These statistics indicate that the cancers are not at all caused by these genes; merely, these genes enable certain environmental factors to affect those who carry these genes. Moreover, these environmental triggers of cancer have become more prevalent in recent years. And though the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene carriers do individually possess a higher risk of cancer, they comprise less than 5% of breast cancer cases.[ii]
Consequently, inherited genetic traits cannot be deemed causal factors in the genesis of the vast majority of cancers. Furthermore, inherited predispositions or susceptibilities only exist in the sense that there must be an environmental exposure to elicit the genetic response. Remove the exposure and you remove the predisposition.
Clearly, the environment is the key piece to solving the cancer puzzle. Yet rather than disrupting the corporate capitalist consumer culture that incessantly disseminates its toxic pollutants throughout our land, water, and air, we choose the path of least resistance. Instead of removing carcinogens and other substances such as endocrine disrupting chemicals from our environment, we irradiate, poison, or mutilate our bodies to permit global industrial capitalism to continue unabated. And though at times these primitive procedures allow us a productive life after they take arduous and torturous tolls, other times they may just prolong or even hasten the inevitable.
As a victim of cancer myself, I comprehend the current need for treatment. But as one of the innumerable many who have lost loved ones to the illness, it is the lack of effort to truly reject this preventable harm to which I demur. Angelina Jolie’s choice of “prevention” – one that remains unaffordable and unavailable to most women who suffer at the hands of our corporate health insurance and medical system – is a rather extreme measure which has nonetheless become all too acceptable.
While I do not begrudge her personal decision, I begrudge a society that chooses to tolerate its women undergoing amputation and excision as routine procedures. As anthropogenic alterations to our world render it more and more inhospitable to life, will we continue to abide increasingly insane actions to maintain our existence, or will we ever relinquish our short-term superficial conveniences for long-term genuine life?
Kristine Mattis is a teacher, writer, scientist, activist, and agitator. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW-Madison. Before returning to graduate school, Kristine worked as a medical researcher, as a reporter for the congressional record in the U.S. House of Representatives, and as a schoolteacher. She and her partner blog when they can at www.rebelpleb.blogspot.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/16/for-angelina-jolie-mutilation-amounts-prevention/
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