Today’s New York Times has a story about how Angelina Jolie has been able to manipulate her image over the years. It’s pretty crazy, actually, because it helps explain how the woman was able to go from a crazy, vile-of-blood-wearing actress to a mother of six and a philanthropist.

Basically, we the public are pathetic. We’re all simply dying to see photos of Angelina and her family, so she is able to get some news organizations to cover her in the way she wants to be covered, i.e., not referencing her and Brad as “Brangelina” and talking about her charity work instead of her scandals. If a magazine has exclusive Angelina photos, people are going to buy it, which is obviously good for business. Magazines don’t even need to write about her dark side to sell copies, she’s just that popular.

The article compares Angelina’s negotiations with media outlets to Jennifer Lopez’s. J.Lo supposedly had a team of eight working out things for her when she sold pictures of her twins to People. Angelina, on the other hand, worked out People‘s purchase of the first photos of her twins all by herself, along with a little help from her lawyer and her manager. This got me wondering, How does Angelina manage to take care of her children and orchestrate complicated deals with news organizations? Does she get so much help from nannies and housekeepers that, even with six children, she still has time to manage her own career? Or is she just superwoman, who never sleeps? Or does she have dominatrix super powers? I’m gonna go with the last one.