Breasts and Cancer
My mother must have been twenty or twenty-one when she met my father. I'm not sure how long they knew each other before she slept with him on the expectation that they would be married within six weeks and it was just a matter of filling out a little paperwork.
It took more like two or two and a half years to get permission to marry. My oldest sister was born about two weeks after my mother turned twenty-two.
My mother was very beautiful her entire life, not just in her youth. But she told me that in her youth, she got called something like "die Loren" as in Sophia Loren, presumably German for "the Loren," because of her bust line.
I guess my mother was not quite 29 when I was born and she must have been fifty when she had breast cancer the first time. I was pregnant with my first child who would be born just after my twenty second birthday, so my mother didn't tell me she had cancer.
She didn't feel it was appropriate to tell a pregnant woman "Your mother might be dying." I had to hear it through the grapevine.
My father was twelve years older than her and rather old fashioned. He frequently came across like a sexist pig.
I heard from a relative that he told my mother "If you want breast reconstruction for you, that's fine. But you don't need to do that for me." She never did get reconstruction.
My opinion of my father went up and he was already a legend in my mind. I spent my childhood expecting to read about him in school in my history books at some point because he was a decorated World War II veteran.
I later personally took care of my sister following her first mastectomy. My mother's mother died as a consequence of cancer, I want to say uterine cancer, not breast cancer, and my mother was one of twelve kids and several of her sisters had either breast or uterine cancer.
My father had colon cancer, which is a risk factor for an immediate female relative for uterine cancer. My brother had skin cancer. My sister had cancer multiple times.
Women with nothing really wrong with them routinely have cosmetic surgery. That concerns me.
For some years, I was active as openly female on the overwhelmingly male forum Hacker News. I tried to foster discussion of topics pertinent to the interests of women, such as leaving the first comment on an article about The physics of bras to get the ball rolling, which was effective.
I did something similar years later for a survey about breast reconstruction under a different handle and got open hatred for opening the flood gates and fostering discussion.
On the one hand, I believe it's her body and she claimed she was choosing life and to make sure she stuck around for the sake of her children.
On the other hand, she's renowned for her conventional beauty and for attracting a man who was seen as a real catch.
My own mother didn't tell me she had breast cancer. I heard that through the grapevine and also heard through the grapevine that my father told her it's entirely up to her if she wants reconstructive surgery.
No one seemed to say anything at all about the fact that Brad Pitt stood by her after she chose to electively remove both breasts though the entire world assumes they are both beautiful people and she qualified for his bed based on her looks.
Thirteen years later, I still don't quite know what to think or feel about Angelina Jolie and her medical choice as she called it and her decision to use her fame to broadcast this private matter to the world.
But all my respect for Brad Pitt and his decision to stand by her and not promptly leave while she made this bizarre decision to brag about being a newly titless extremely beautiful woman married to "one of the hottest men on the planet."
This post brought to you by the latest news suggesting Angelina Jolie is the reason their children are opting to very publicly reject their father and his name like she rejected her famous father while pursuing the same profession.
The name Pitt is the 4,052nd most common last name in the United States, with approximately 8,510 people bearing it according to the 2020 Census. This translates to about 2.8 of every 100,000 people in the U.S.. The surname is predominantly White, with a significant portion of the population identifying as Black or having multiple races.
FYI children of Brad Pitt: if you don't CHOOSE to go into the entertainment industry, you don't have to go through life being asked if your father is Brad Pitt. His last name is uncommon but not unique.
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