Transcript
Angelina Jolie As One of the Strongest Women I know
Itzamary Melendez
University of Central Florida
Angelina Jolie As One of the Strongest Women I know
Each and every one of us has at least one person they look up to for a particular reason. In my case, I have looked up at Angelina Jolie since the day I first watched The Tomb Raider movie when I was just a little girl. I have admired this woman for one main reason, and that is her overall strength as a woman. She has unique strengths that all together guided her through the rough moments of her life and kept her head up all the way to the top of success. With this paper, I have taken the time to study her life including her strengths and the things she has suffered through and have managed to learn quite a lot about her.
Angelina Jolie is seen by people in different ways. There are the people that see her as someone who got where she is thanks to being born to a couple of actors and then there are the ones like me that see her as a strong independent woman that worked hard for where she is now. Yes, she did have a bit of help but an amazing actress like her is not created merely by the family one is born to, it also takes talent and persistence, wish is one of Jolie’s strengths. With her persistence she took time to work on herself and her acting in order to get to the level of excellence she delivers in every film. Her persistence was correlated to the motivation she felt to become successful therefore leading her to work hard towards her goals (Cambria & Guthrie, 2010). Another strength she possesses that allowed her to overcome the struggles she has gone through is her humanity and emotional intelligence. Based on a study done by Kumar et al. (2013), there was a correlation found between emotional intelligence and motivation for achievement. This means that thanks to Jolie’s emotional intelligence she was able to surpass the tough times and feel motivated to carry on towards success. She also demonstrated her humanity through providing the world with the “Angelina Jolie Effect” and encouraging further look into breast cancer treatment for the benefit of women across the globe which as found in a study can benefit the increase of treatment for more breast cancer patients (Evans, et al., 2014).
Throughout Jolie’s life she suffered through many challenges including gender stereotypes. Throughout her life there were gender stereotypes that others expected her to demonstrate and perform. She was always told to behave like a lady and keep herself healthy and thin. She was always told to follow set social constructs for her gender, which based on the book by Etaugh and Bridges can be defined as the set “traits, behaviors and roles that people associate with females and males that are not inherent in one’s sex but rather shaped by the interpersonal, cultural and societal forces in each of our lives” (p.18, 2013). Jolie was expected to be kind and warm and reflect concern for others, like any other stereotypical woman would (Etaugh & Bridges, 2013). She is known for being humanitarian and caring for others but this only feeds to the expectations for her to be the perfect stereotypical woman. She also experienced gender stereotyping when it came to the films she was in, this is a problem experienced by most women in this field but in particular due to her beauty there were more expectations and standards placed on her during filming. Jolie experienced prejudice with overly positive attitudes for being a beautiful woman which means there were positive “emotional reactions or attitudes towards” her due to her membership to that particular group (p.37 2012). Due to this she was forced to follow a set list of injunctive norms that were set to her by society to be beautiful on camera because that is what women are known for in society (Eagly & Karau, 2002).
Jolie also experienced the problem of work-family expectations in which she felt pressured with having a family and it being affected by her work but a prefect family was expected of her quickly as of a peer pressure type of scenario that all women experience (Etaugh & Bridges, 2013). She had to work on her family-work coordination and that cost her a lot of stress since she has a total of six children (Etaugh & Bridges, 2013)
Another situation that Jolie suffered through was “prolonged sadness or irritability”, otherwise known as depression (Etaugh & Bridges, 2013). This came along at the beginning of her adolescence when she experienced problems with her self-esteem. She did not have a strong “sense of worth or value” she could really identify herself with (Etaugh & Bridges, 2013). Jolie also suffered from lower self-esteem with each of her divorces and high levels of anxiety which led her to fall into anorexia nervosa making her lose weight to the point where she looked like a walking corpse (Etaugh & Bridges, 2013). This is when Jolie had to work on her optimism in order to be able to “believe or at least hope that things would get better” (Baker, Greenberg, & Yalof, 2008). With depression being one of the “most widespread and disabling illnesses in the world” it was important for Jolie to begin working on it and not allow herself to be an addition to the number although she still suffers from this yet continues to work hard on herself to keep moving forward (Eagleman & Downar, 2016).
Wilts studying Jolie I had the opportunity to learn more about her life and was able to learn more about depression when it comes to successful women who are typically expected to be happy all the time. I took time to look into the physiological aspects behind depression and how this could have been something that took part of Jolies like and how her struggles affected her psychological and physically. I also learned that if Jolie were to be put into a specific archetype she would be the mother due to her motherly love and strong emotions. I have also learned to never give up on anything no matter what. Jolie grew up suffering and still does suffer from depression and this did not stop her from achieving a successful career in life which is a great life lesson for anyone who struggles with similar problems to hers.
In conclusion, although a very strong independent woman with high emotional intelligence, Jolie has suffered many times during her life but has successfully gotten through it all. She has many strengths and has overcome many sufferings in her life and it is something to truly learn from. Her life is a life lesson to us all that as long as you are kind through your humanitarianism and are persistent with everything you do that you can overcome anything that is put in front of you.
References
Baker, D., Greenberg, C., & Yalof, I. L. (2008). What happy women know: How new findings in positive psychology can change women's lives for the better. New York, NY: St. Martins Griffin.
Cambria, J., & Guthrie, J. T. (2010). Motivating and engaging students in reading. New England Reading Association Journal, 46(1), 16.
Eagleman, D., & Downar, J. (2016). Brain and behavior: A cognitive neuroscience perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.
Eagly, A. H., & Karau, S. J. (2002). Role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders. Psychological review, 109(3), 573.
Etaugh, C. A., & Bridges, J. S. (2013). Women's lives: A psychological exploration (3rd ed.). Education.
Evans, D. G., Barwell, J., Eccles, D. M., Collins, A., Izatt, L., Jacobs, C., . . . Murray, A. (2014). The Angelina Jolie effect: How high celebrity profile can have a major impact on provision of cancer related services. Breast Cancer Research, 16(5). doi:10.1186/s13058-014-0442-6
Kumar, V. V., Mehta, M., & Maheshwari, N. (2013). Effect of emotional intelligence on the achievement motivation, psychological adjustment and scholastic performance of secondary school students. Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology, 39(1), 60-67.
Matlin, M. W. (2012). The psychology of women (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.
