Melissa Etheridge said that she has not spoken with her friend Brad Pitt or his fiancee Angelina Jolie since she made her controversial statements about Jolie’s decision to have a double mastectomy. The “Come To My Window” singer also tried to further explain her comment that it was the “fearful decision.”
Last week, Etheridge sparked a controversy when she told the Washignton Blade that she “wouldn’t call it the brave choice.”
The breast cancer survivor added, “I actually think it's the most fearful choice you can make when confronting anything with cancer. My belief is that cancer comes from inside you and so much of it has to do with the environment of your body. It's the stress that will turn that gene on or not.”
The singer was criticized for the comment. Even Dancing with the Stars host Brooke Burke-Charvet, who battled thyroid cancer, made a statement, saying, “I feel like to comment on somebody else's decision and their motivation and to criticize it in any way feels really inappropriate for me.”
In her first public statements since her interview with the Washington Blade, Etheridge spoke with Us Weekly at the 2013 Recording Academy Honors Tuesday. She is a close friend of Pitt’s, having performed at his 2000 wedding to Jennifer Aniston.
“I in no way meant for that statement to reach [Brad Pitt] in that way,” she told the site. “It was not meant for him… or his wife.” She added, “Everyone's personal health is their own personal choice.”
Etheridge said that she hasn’t actually been in contact with Pitt “since he 'married' Angelina.” She added, “But we were very close before that. I don't know . . . I have reached out.”
She’s even lost contact with Ansiton. “I haven't heard from her either. We all kinda got our own families and went our own way,” she explained. “"It's funny we all were together and then it all went POOF.”
Pitt and Jolie are engaged and have been together since 2005. Jolie told the world that she had a double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer in a New York Times oped last month.
image: CBS