The day after Thanksgiving. Turned on CNN and watched the same news stories over and over: Russian spy dies, shoppers line up at 5 AM to get good deals, and bloodiest day in Iraq since the US led invasion.

I am stuffed with CNN and food so I turn to the RSS feeds turning up on my computer. “Body Politik: Exploring the new monogamy” by Denie Brunsdon in the McGill Daily caught my eye. She refers to this new monogamy that “focuses on the understanding that openness, honesty, discussion, and flexibility are far greater assets in a successful long-term partnership than a hard and fast rule against all hanky-panky.”

What the new monogamy means to the younger college crowd and people in their early 20s is an “open relationship.” During college, I always had a friend of a friend who was trying to encourage his or her partner to have an open relationship, get out of an open relationship or had just broken up because of an open relationship. I wonder how these women in open relationships look to the world. Brunsdon refers to being weary of “the saintly-wife or sinning-slut spectrum.” How long will we continue to relegate women to these two opposite, polarizing categories?

A few posts about I referred to slut being a new power term. The word is being thrown around all over the place a lot more than even a few years ago. One question I have is do open relationships make women come across as sluts?

One of Women’s History’s most beloved figures Amelia Earhart wrote this note to her husband before their marriage “I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly.” Clearly, Earhart wasn’t the first woman to suggest an open marriage. It is because women like Earhart that scholars became interested in the private lives of public women and in turn we were able to learn about their family, marriages, relationships, friendships, hobbies, and, of course, sexuality. And no one would ever suggest that Earhart was a slut because she had an extramarital affair. But everyone was out to blame Angelina Jolie for breaking up the golden Pitt-Aniston partnership. Everything from her sexual past was brought to light.

My main concern is not how Jolie is written up today but how will she be written up in the history books. I know there are much more complicated histories of Earhart written beyond what is recorded in our textbooks. What Earhart has done with her life is much more admirable than Jolie. Even Jolie said on the June 20th show of Anderson Cooper 360
“JOLIE: Yes. Well, I have a stupid income for what I do for a living.”

There have been rumors circulating for a long time that Jolie preferred an open relationship while married to Billy Bob Thornton. Is it because Earhart lived a more visibly admirable life than Jolie that she does not deserve outward criticism for an open marriage?

I don’t think either women deserved or deserved such criticism. But I know it will be included in Jolie’s biography as it is included more and more in biographies about Earhart. We can only wait to see how both women are written up in the history books in regards to their sexuality and personal relationships.