Angelina Jolie's Surgery: The New Yorker "I do not feel any less of a woman," Angelina Jolie wrote in the Times this morning, in an op-ed revealing that she has recently undergone preventive double-mastectomy surgery. Jolie's mother, Marcheline Bertrand, died of ovarian cancer at the age of fifty-six. As a carrier of what she called a "faulty" BRCA1 gene, Jolie's own risk of developing ovarian cancer was determined by her doctors to be fifty per cent; of breast cancer, eighty-seven per cent. A mother of six, Jolie elected to act now, before any diagnosis of cancer. Of her children, she wrote, "They know I love them and will do anything to be with them as long as I can." She also pointed out that the test, which costs more than three thousand dollars in the United States, is out of reach for many vulnerable women. The surgery, which she describes in unflinching detail, "does feel like a scene out of a science fiction film," and having played Lara Croft, battling bad guys in black latex, she should know. What Jolie also knows is that typically, when a celebrity's breasts are under public discussion, the issues raised about them - Are they big enough? Are they sexy enough? Are they really hers? - are objectifying and demeaning. A few years ago, she challenged this perception in a different way, by being pictured on the cover of W magazine radiantly breastfeeding one of her newborn twins. Now she has challenged it again, by speaking of her celebrated body with words typically reserved for the doctor's office: ducts, tissue, bruising, pain. Jolie's medical decision says again what shouldn't need re-saying: that a woman's body is hers, that breasts are for something other than ogling, and that hard choices are made for strong reasons. Her decision to make her choice public is bold and brave and admirable. It is what celebrity is for. Rebecca Mead writes about new ways to care for people with dementia in this week's issue. Photograph by Dan Kitwood/AFP/Getty.