Angelina Jolie responds to gender policing of Shiloh

I generally wouldn’t give more attention to the ridiculousness that’s been created by tabloids around this, but considering the larger impact these sources have, it’s worth noting. During promotion for her new movie Salt, Angelina Jolie just had to be asked about her and Brad Pitt’s child, Shiloh, who prefers to wear “boy’s clothes” and wear her hair short.

As many of you probably already know, entertainment tabloids have been gender policing the shit out of the 4-year old and claiming bad parenting as Angelina is “turning Shiloh into a boy.” (You must read Miriam’s awesome post about why this is absurd and fucked up.) So I was happy to see her bite back a bit and defend her child in a recent interview:

“I would never be the kind of parent to force somebody to be something they are not. I think that is just bad parenting.

Children should be allowed to express themselves in whatever way they wish without anybody judging them because it is an important part of their growth. Society always has something to learn when it comes to the way we judge each other, label each other. We have far to go.”

Good on her.