Angelina, Brad...and a New Kind of Beauty

Maybe you caught the Anderson Cooper interview with Angelina Jolie recently. I did...and I was mesmerized...by the interview, that is. Here was this icon of beauty, the voluminously-lipped lovely voted by most men in North America and Europe as the woman they'd most like to date, speaking of things unrelated to the red carpet, to films, to new releases, or to glamor of any kind. Instead, she waxed eloquent and passionate about the plight of poor children in Africa. That thud is the sound of my jaw hitting the floor. Where I've come to expect vapid expressions of stunning superficiality, I was getting schooled in justice, poverty issues, compassion, and the like. I was hearing the voice of Jesus and the gospels through an unlikely prophet. I was impressed and amazed. How wonderful that in our world of botox and surgical enhancement, of ephemeral fashion, gossip magazines, and the revolving door of musical-chairs celebrity pairings, here was a gorgeous couple, Angelina and Brad, whose beauty seemed increasingly eternal and spiritual. They were using their celebrity to point to a cause much greater than themselves. And this was not the fashionable Hollywood political posturing we've come to expect: it seemed deeper and more sincere. Thank goodness--thank God--for moments and for people like these. I have much to learn, it turns out, from Branjolie and the new beauty they evince.