The policing of gender roles as enacted by children is just insane. But at least those celebrity children have the option when they grow up of getting a big fat book contract to write about their vexed childhood growing up in a celebrity bubble. (This doesn not justify the invasion of their privacy from birth, IMHO. Those children really are trapped.)

You are right that all we need to do is read the covers of these magazines in order to follow the narrative. But I wonder if cultural studies students could detect some (or even a great deal of) “slippage” between the narrative on the cover and the information in the article? And yet the narrative remains stable and unchanged the following week. . .

The other big story is, of course, Brad’s transgender child, born a girl and presenting as a boy, with which slightly lower classy mags like US are obsessed. They interview numerous “experts” of dubious credentials, not to mention “friends” who “confide” in them, to put out the message that the child is deluded and that her parents are warping her by indulging it. Of course, others might argue that tremendous damage might be done to the kid by forcing her to enact a kind of femininity that is offensive to her. The whole obsession is in part a narrative about gender; but it is also an opportunity to be highly critical of Brangelina’s parenting (we know Jen would have been on top of the refusing to dress like a girl in a New York minute, right?)

I think it is hard to know where these narratives come from, however. Jen has a “career”, just like I do: in order to be a professor I have to do certain things that cause me to be perceived as one. If you add in my blogger personality, folks who know me like Historiann and Urban Exile know that there is someone who kind of looks like that person, but is also not that person at all — I have exaggerated features of my personality and located a blogger persona which I maintain. I do that in a way because it “sells” my ideas, just as Jen is selling movies.

That some of us find those movies exasperating in their view of child-bearing as the ultimate gift of womanhood… well, yeah, I’m down with that program. I would also say that while commitment to a person is one way to enact humanness and ethical sociability, it isn’t the only way — many single people are quite happy, and have nurturing networks of friends.

Oh, and the “Marxist feminist” bit? Joking self-mockery, mostly. (I thought that was pretty clear, but maybe not?)

Nice, provocative writing. Thanks.

Who Jennifer really is, few people know. Maybe no one. Maybe not even Jennifer. We can have feminist wet dreams that she is an empowered, rich woman who doesn’t need no man to make her life whole. On the other hand, maybe she is just a real fuck-up who doesn’t know how to be successfully intimate with anyone.

As usual, the Big Machine cranks out brain candy and we buy it. Angelina and Jennifer make a perfect Evil Stepmother and Snow White, both aesthetically and story-line wise. Neither is interesting without the other, hence the long drawn out myth of fighting over Brad. In fact, none of these people are interesting at all.

And, of course, this is worthy of feminist critique, because why is it that the ‘traditional’ RomCom lead is allowed married happiness (or that we should root for her married happiness), but the hot, tattoo-ed, sexually-knowing, alternative-type woman is not! Talk about reinforcing cultural norms.