Her revelation of her mastectomy – and the evident support of her partner, Brad Pitt – has elicited a rapturous response from popular media, including the tabloids that once damned her as the “other woman” who broke up Pitt’s previous marriage. There is something about the narrative – a sex symbol sacrificing her fetishized breasts for the sake of her children, with her husband staying by her side – that is deeply reassuring to women in Western culture.