"If I don't have breasts or a uterus anymore, am I still a woman?"
That's the question a character in Erin Brockovich asks as she recovers from a double mastectomy and hysterectomy. The answer, delivered by Julia Roberts with her characteristic crooked grin, is: "Of course, you'll always be a woman. You just won't have to buy any more underwire or maxi-pads."
This message—of course you're still a woman, even if you're missing some of the organ and tissue you were born with—is the most important part of Angelina Jolie's op-ed in today's New York Times. She writes about her own preventative double mastectomy, a three-month procedure she underwent because she has a so-called "faulty gene," BRCA1. People with a defect in this gene have a 65 percent risk of getting breast cancer. Jolie's mother died of cancer.
Jolie first tells her readers that her status as a mother hasn't changed since the procedure. She writes that her six children "see nothing that makes them uncomfortable. They can see my small scars and that's it. Everything else is just Mommy, the same as she always was." Motherhood is an important aspect of a woman's femininity, and it's good that Jolie reassures her audience that she's still fully a mother, even after her body has changed.


