FAR TO GO / Gender hysteria and celebrity culture
Lisa Foad / Toronto / Thursday, October 21, 2010
http://www.xtra.ca/public/Toronto/Gender_hysteria_and_celebrity_culture-9309.aspxJust when it seemed that the gender panic incited by the nonconformity of four-year-old Shiloh Jolie-Pitt had finally begun to lull, gossip rag Life & Style has launched yet another alarmist attack. "Shiloh manipulated by her mom," declares the Sept 22 headline, its subtitle boasting "new evidence that Angelina is forcing Shiloh's obsession with being a boy."
The cover story, buoyed by an alleged Jolie-Pitt "insider," insists not only that Shiloh's gender performance is not her own ("Angelina makes Shiloh wear the hand-me-downs of eight-year-old brother Maddox! Including his boxer shorts!"), but that it's a carefully constructed hipster-family ploy, premeditated and egocentric: "Angelina has an idea that each child should have a specific personality that she picked out for them practically at birth. [Shiloh's] the tomboy."
