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What does the end of Brangelina mean for Angelina Jolie’s image?

Angelina Jolie is an Academy Award-winning actress. She’s also a director, a screenwriter, an ambassador for the United Nations, a mother of six and a visiting professor at the London School of Economics. She’s the living, breathing representation that (with help, coffee, money, whatever) women can do it all.

Except maybe not. As of this morning, Jolie filed for divorce from her husband of two years, Brad Pitt. Let’s brush over that two-year thing, because in reality, Brad and Angelina were partners for 12 years. This breakup, in the sea of Hollywood breakups, seems to be more traumatic for people than usual.

But why? Is it the sheer volume of their accomplishments? Brangelina was a representation of partnership—the pair co-habitated, co-parented and co-starred. They were crazy in love while juggling an oversized brood, humanitarian efforts and two impressive careers. No matter what you think of them or how they got together, the life they created does ring a bell to the sound of “couple goals.”

But for me, the pang of sadness that I felt upon being crushed by the Twitter avalanche this morning centers on just Angelina, no “Br” required. Here is a woman who does it all. She went from sex symbol to human rights activist to mom to director to wife to professor. And with each added role, she didn’t shed her previous self. Rather, she incorporated each new undertaking into her constantly growing and developing identity. Being a sex symbol didn’t make her less smart, and being a professor didn’t make her less sexy.

So the pang I felt this morning can be pinned to a specific worry: If Angelina loses the role of wife, does that change something? Does that mean she’s not really doing it all? Yeah, she’s still a mom and an actress and a humanitarian and a gorgeous woman. She can still pen a hell of an essay in the New York Times about electing to get a mastectomy. But did her decision to do it all cost her a marriage? And if she can’t make it work, what hope is there for the rest of us?

It’s a small, self-absorbed thought from the dark corner of my brain. The problem with that line of reasoning is that it suggests that Angelina isn’t Angelina without Brangelina, as if the super-coupling made her everything she is. Instead, let’s consider the fact that by all accounts, Angelina Jolie has had a lovely, shiny life, full of accomplishments and a supposedly happy marriage to boot. It’s a difficult proposition, giving up that sort of image. It takes a certain kind of courage and strength, but it’s a kind that Angelina has demonstrated in the past and continues to demonstrate now.

Angelina Jolie may be dropping the role of wife, but she’s moving forward in the role of single mom who does not care what the world thinks of her. This divorce doesn’t diminish her capacity as a woman who does it all—actually, it proves it.

@lchval | laurenchval@redeyechicago.com