The public flips out over Angelina again, may_child rolls her eyes and yawns
I recall some months back the brouhaha over Shiloh Jolie-Pitt dressing like a boy, and the subsequent screechings all over the Internet, not to mention the tabloids (who, lacking any Brangelina gossip of substance for months, were no doubt ecstatic to have a new item to blow out of proportion), that Angelina was "trying to turn Shiloh into a boy."
I pondered this. So dressing a girl like a boy is an attempt to actually change her gender? Did it ever occur to people that Angelina (and not unimportantly, Brad) dress Shiloh that way because she WANTS to be dressed that way? Angelina confirmed this recently, saying that Shiloh likes to dress like her brothers, and *gasp* "wants to be a boy." That set off another tempest in a teapot, which was amusing at first but then just got tedious.
Shiloh is 4 years old. What 4-year-old doesn't want to be something they're not, at least from time to time? (There's even a couple of terms for it: playing pretend, or make-believe.) I wasn't exactly a girly-girl when I was a kid (I'm still not), which frustrated the heck out of my stepmother when I visited my dad...she wanted to dress me in frilly clothes and fuss with my hair, and I hated it but usually put up with it.
What frustrated my stepmother, and I know because she told me, was that I was letting my natural assets, like my curly hair, go to waste. I "looked so pretty" in dresses, she said. Which makes me wonder if people get so pissy about Shiloh preferring boyish attire because this is a child who won the genetic lottery, and instead of showing it off in frilly dresses and whatnot, she wants her hair to be very short and to wear boyish clothes.
(Well, if that is the case, they can take comfort in the probability that this is a phase that Shiloh will outgrow. When she's, say, a teenager, she will likely be a knockout, and do everything she can to exploit it.)
Of course, these are usually the same people who screech to the heavens about Suri Cruise's "runway" dressing style. TomKat aren't letting her be a child, they wail.
So...TomKat aren't letting Suri be a child by dressing her in fancy clothes, and Brangelina aren't letting Shiloh be a girl by dressing her in boyish clothes. Both TomKat and Brangelina are horrible parents for dressing their respective daughters in the way each girl wants to be dressed. Armchair parenting, particularly when it comes to celebrities you do not know and never will, is full of equally seamless logic.
Myself, I think Brangelina have their ducks in a row, at least mostly, when it comes to parenting. TomKat have always struck me as being a little weird (so have Brangelina, for that matter), but Suri appears perfectly happy and healthy. Of course, I don't know them any better than the people who trash them, but I don't fixate on them either. I do kinda like seeing pics of the Jolie-Pitt clan because all six kids are cute as heck, and appear to enjoy being with each other. But other than that, they are just...there.
Besides which, my approach to a ubiquitous celebrity I don't particularly care for is to ignore him or her...and yes, it's possible. I do it with Julia Roberts, and the supposed "wronged woman" in the Brangelina saga: Jennifer Aniston.