Requiem for a Jolie

It only took four years and a relationship with of the most attractive male movie stars of our time for Angelina Jolie to go from beloved bi icon — telling Barbara Walters in 2003, "I consider myself a very sexual person who loves who she loves, whatever sex they may be" — to brazen bi gone, telling the French magazine Public in 2007, "I've never hidden my bisexuality, but since I've been with Brad, there's no longer a place for that or S&M in my life."

With that statement, Angelina Jolie dismissed bisexuality like a sexual fetish she's outgrown, and in doing so betrayed me and fence-sitters everywhere, just as many other "bisexual" celebrities have done.

The phenomenon of the celebrity bi gone is nothing new. In my lifetime, I've watched Drew Barrymore, Madonna, Chloe Sevigny, Lucy Liu and Christina Aguilera, to name a few, saucily mention their heteroflexibility then zip their lips, jump into straight relationships and adopt clean-cut images faster than you can say "switch-hitter." But despite the predictable pattern, I never thought I'd have to relegate Angelina to the same column as Anne Heche.

Just call me crazy, but wasn't Jolie the most outspoken bisexual celebrity of our time? No, let me rephrase that — of all time? Let's reflect on a few of her greatest hits:

I'm the person most likely to sleep with my female fans. I genuinely love other women. And I think they know that.
— Jane

Honestly, I like everything. Boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. Which is a problem when I'm walking down the street.
— Elle

I was open about [my bisexuality] because I wanted people to know that I had been with a woman. I spoke about it because I'd discovered something wonderful and I thought people should know my experience was very real, very normal.
— GQ

For obvious reasons, part of me wanted to doubt that Jolie is no longer bi.

Shady Source

The French gossip magazine Public is, according to my sister who lived in Paris for four years, "worse than Us Weekly" and has a reputation for publishing false information and embellishments. As I read through Jolie's other quotes in the Public interview, I couldn't help but think they all sounded decisively un-Angelina.

For instance, I doubted that the U.N. goodwill ambassador would say Brad Pitt has to "stay sexy" in order to keep her, or that, lucky her, Brad "lets me talk to whomever I want." I can't imagine Angelina asking permission before striking up a conversation with anybody.

But whether or not the quotes were accurate, one unavoidable fact remained: Jolie hasn't mentioned her attraction to women in the press for years, leading even The Advocate to question whether she has lost her lesbian fan base in an August 2007 article, "Is Angie Over?"

Last March, the Huffington Post reported that Jolie, famous for never having a publicist, had hired her first spokesperson, Trevor Nielson, the same publicist who represents the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I could easily picture a conversation in which Nielson advised Jolie to cement her Mother Teresa image by dispelling the last ounce of her wild child identity: her queerness.

After all, even publicists know that the public is too dense to understand that a mother of four happily partnered with a man could still be bisexual. So why not smooth out that rough edge in the foreign press so those who want to believe in her heterosexuality and family image can fully embrace her, while her queer fans can dismiss the quote as gossip?

But I didn't dismiss them, and neither did most other major news outlets, including Fox News, who picked up the story. Bisexuals everywhere read the quote and felt like they got punched in the stomach, while others shrugged it off as simply a poorly worded way of Jolie stating her monogamy to Pitt.

But let's face it: The quote suggests that all bisexuals are transitional and the sexual orientation simply becomes moot with a commitment to a heterosexual relationship. Unfortunately, Jolie isn't the first celebrity to reinforce this stereotype.