Jennifer Aniston Wants You to Know She Is Not Pregnant, but She’s Fed Up
Jennifer Aniston is not staying silent anymore. (Photo: Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic)
If just a fraction of tabloid reports about Jennifer Aniston were true, she’d be in despair that she couldn’t have children … or she’d have more children than her ex Brad Pitt. Either way, the former Friends star would be depressed about her inability to keep a man, which everyone knows is the key to happiness.
This is the way the story about Aniston has gone since she and Pitt divorced in 2005. For the most part, Aniston has stayed silent, but she spoke up Tuesday in a column for the Huffington Post after the latest round of “Is Jennifer Aniston pregnant?” stories.
“For the record, I am not pregnant,” the 47-year-old actress wrote. “What I am is fed up. I’m fed up with the sport-like scrutiny and body shaming that occurs daily under the guise of ‘journalism,’ the ‘First Amendment’ and ‘celebrity news.’”
As the social media abstainer explained, she and husband Justin Theroux are hounded by dozens of photographers daily. Yet the reason she decided to address the subject had little to do with them and more to do with the little girls who see the media narrative about her.
“If I am some kind of symbol to some people out there, then clearly I am an example of the lens through which we, as a society, view our mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, female friends and colleagues,” she continued. “The objectification and scrutiny we put women through is absurd and disturbing. The way I am portrayed by the media is simply a reflection of how we see and portray women in general, measured against some warped standard of beauty.”
Jen and Justin Theroux have to dodge the paps wherever they go. (Photo: Robert Kamau/GC Images)
For Aniston, the past month — which has been chock-full of hard news — has been an example of how much society decides a woman’s value based on whether she has children or is married.
“The sheer amount of resources being spent right now by press trying to simply uncover whether or not I am pregnant (for the bajillionth time … but who’s counting) points to the perpetuation of this notion that women are somehow incomplete, unsuccessful, or unhappy if they’re not married with children. … Here’s where I come out on this topic: we are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child. We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies.
“Yes, I may become a mother some day, and since I’m laying it all out there, if I ever do, I will be the first to let you know,” she wrote. “But I’m not in pursuit of motherhood because I feel incomplete in some way, as our celebrity news culture would lead us all to believe. I resent being made to feel ‘less than’ because my body is changing and/or I had a burger for lunch and was photographed from a weird angle and therefore deemed one of two things: ‘pregnant’ or ‘fat.’ Not to mention the painful awkwardness that comes with being congratulated by friends, coworkers and strangers alike on one’s fictional pregnancy (often a dozen times in a single day).”
Yeesh. The solution Aniston proposes is for consumers to stop “buying the bulls***,” since the tabloids are unlikely to change their ways.
Think she has a point?
