Jennifer Aniston: 'I Am Not Pregnant, What I Am Is Fed Up'
For the record: Jennifer Aniston is fed up as hell, and she's not going to take this anymore. In a powerful essay for The Huffington Post, the 47-year-old actress attacked the press for years' worth of false pregnancy rumors and body shaming.
"I am not pregnant," she writes in an essay titled "For the Record," published July 12, 2016. "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.'"
"The objectification and scrutiny we put women through is absurd and disturbing," she says. "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. Sometimes cultural standards just need a different perspective so we can see them for what they really are—a collective acceptance... a subconscious agreement. We are in charge of our agreement."
Aniston's essay appears to have been fueled by yet another round of pregnancy rumors that sprouted in June 2016. "This past month in particular has illuminated for me how much we define a woman's value based on her marital and maternal status," she writes. "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."
She continues: "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. That decision is ours and ours alone. Let's make that decision for ourselves and for the young women in this world who look to us as examples. Let's make that decision consciously, outside of the tabloid noise. We don't need to be married or mothers to be complete. We get to determine our own 'happily ever after' for ourselves."
Aniston admits the tabloid's "dangerous" practices are unlikely to change anytime soon. What she's hoping to accomplish is to change people's awareness and reaction to the "toxic messages buried within these seemingly harmless stories served up as truth and shaping our ideas of who we are."
"We get to decide how much we buy into what's being served up, and maybe some day the tabloids will be forced to see the world through a different, more humanized lens because consumers have just stopped buying the bulls***," she writes.
Yeah, we'll totally drink to that.
Aniston previously addressed this topic during an interview with the Today show and at the MAKERS Conference in 2014.