It’s never entirely clear what’s happening in the most Googled and
gossiped-over love triangle in living memory. News changes hour by hour, and
you have to keep up or risk losing the plot. I’m referring, of course, to
the three-way relationship in flux that is Brad and Angelina and Jennifer.
Are Brad and Angelina on a trial break, or is it more like a permanent one?
Are Brad and Jen planning a reconciliation, or has Jen told Brad to back
off? Are Angelina and Brad stronger than ever? It doesn’t really matter
either way, because so many of us are hooked the moment we see these three
names in any combination.
This story is monster huge. It’s the saga to rival Charles, Diana and Camilla,
only with better bodies, a shocking second instalment and a lot more
relevance to our own lives. We cannot get enough of it, via television, the
newsstands, the internet (Brangelina alone gets more than 10m Google hits),
and we won’t tire of it until we’re too old to care about love. Because it’s
about a girl like us (who got the fairy tale), the bad-girl man-eater (who
took the fairy tale away) and the guy in the middle who doesn’t know what he
wants — and we all have a vested interest in finding out how it ends.
The reason people invest so much in this particular story, says Julian Linley,
the editor of Heat magazine, is that “Jennifer Aniston is every girl.
Because Friends is still on TV constantly, and people think she’s Rachel.
She’s the girl all women want to be”. Jennifer/Rachel is accessible enough —
not too pretty, not too skinny and not too sorted — for us to believe she’s
no different from us, and we have grown up with her over the 15 years since
Friends first went on air. (She was on the cover of Heat nine years ago, and
now she’s on Grazia's cover every other week.) We’ve seen her adapt her look
to make the most of herself (as opposed to arriving on our screens in a
goddess package, like you-know-who). We’ve followed her quest for the right
guy, watched her find true love and get married. (“And womankind punched the
air when Jen pulled Brad,” says Linley. “It was, like, yes, every girl can
get him, the sexiest man on the planet has picked one of us.”)
When the dream ended in divorce, it was a blow to the hopes of every regular
girl who believed that a fairy-tale ending was possible (if only you had a
nice haircut and a willing smile). The fact that the woman who got between
Jennifer and Brad was a computer-generated male fantasy just made it more of
a betrayal. You don’t have to have been dumped for a better model to
identify with Jen’s pain — you just have to be a female who isn’t a goddess
and wants to live happily ever after, which is why her fate has become a
global concern. “Celebrity mags are, on the surface, about celebs,” says
Linley, “but they’re actually about real life, human emotions and people we
can identify with. Every woman who reads them is putting herself into the
story.”
This story runs and runs because it’s become about the war between two kinds
of femininity — the girl’s girl and the man’s woman — and which one comes
out on top in the end. Jennifer isn’t exactly a girl, but neither is she a
superwoman, like Angelina. Even when Jen’s posing naked on the cover of GQ,
she’s cute, alluring, more saucy cheerleader than Hollywood siren. You just
know she wants to be liked, by both sexes equally, which is why she was the
heart of Friends, and why she is the automatic first choice for soppy
feelgood films. In the four years since her divorce from Brad, she has been
idling in a sad sort of place, making movies in which she plays lovable,
often unlucky-in-love characters, while off set she’s been dating unsuitable
boys who keep dumping her. Her demeanour screams, “Love me, I’m fun, I’m not
scary, I’m a girl. I’m vulnerable.” And that’s why all the girl’s girls
adore her.
We’ve heard the rumours about her scaring Brad away with her faddiness and
neuroses and not wanting children. We’ve watched her bounce from one
disastrous loser boyfriend to another, but somehow that only adds to our
affection for her and our desire for this to come right in the end. It is
perfectly possible that Jen is, in reality, horribly insecure and high
maintenance, but we choose not to go there. Jennifer is good, and sometimes
hopeless and sometimes unlucky, just like us. She’s Bridget Jones, but more
aspirational. What she definitely isn’t is a bi-curious born beauty with an
unapologetic appetite for sex and men and new experiences. Nobody wants
Angelina as a girlfriend, that’s for sure.
But the trajectory of Angelina’s star is what makes this saga extra, extra
fascinating. She started out at the beginning of this (just after the film
Mr & Mrs Smith, in which she starred with Brad) as the husband-stealer
who no female had a good word to say about. Now, four years on, she is the
alpha woman’s ultimate role model. She appears to work all the time, is a
self-styled eco-warrior, a UN ambassador and runs a sprawling family.
Meanwhile, she has single-handedly managed to turn around the conventional
stereotype of the sex-averse busy mother (now, to be really hot, you have to
have at least four children), in the process making single, childless
Jennifer look just a tiny bit feeble. Angelina is unapologetically dark,
complicated, ungirlie and demanding. You can’t begin to imagine her starring
in Friends, or even having girlfriends, for that matter, let alone meeting
the gang for cocktails or helping you to choose a party dress. And you can’t
help but notice that, next to Jen, Brad looked like the protector, whereas
next to Angelina he looks like her escort — the guy she has chosen to be
with, until further notice. Jen and Angelina are like two halves of the
sexual sandwich — one is a people-pleaser, the other one pleases herself.
The only question now is which one Brad will end up with.
The noticeable thing about this love saga is that it has never been about the
man in the middle — until now. The rumour that Brad hankers after the easy
intimacy he had with Jen (we knew it!) has given this story an adrenaline
boost, and now it’s become about what men really want, in the end, when the
smoke clears. Suddenly this has the potential to become a story of love and
friendship triumphing over loins. Of 40 being a turning point. Of divorcées
recovering their mojo and taking their revenge. If Brad goes back to
Jennifer, it means all the Jennifers in the world can sleep easier in their
beds, and it’s a victory for good girls everywhere. Then again, if Brad
stays with Angelina— well, there’ll be another instalment soon enough.
There is something else keeping us Twittering. In the years since Brad met
Angelina, she has become a mother of six, and Brad is a father with knobs
on. By comparison, his old, steady life with Jennifer probably seems like
one long carefree party. So maybe this story will turn out to be about how
domesticity turns everyone into neurotic Jennifers, so you might as well
stick with the Jennifer you know. See? It’s the story of all our lives, only
bigger, faster and more picturesque. Bring on the next twist, please,
Brangjen. We’re ready.
ARE YOU A JENNIFER OR AN ANGELINA
Do you
1 a) Walk into the room and get talking to a nice woman about her nanny?
