Jennifer Aniston: ‘Stop judging me’
Jennifer Aniston is sick and tired of people criticising her – and, she says, women are the worst culprits
POOR Jennifer Aniston. A familiar phrase heard many times over the past few decades. Poor Jen: Brad Pitt left her for Angelina Jolie. Poor Jen: she’ll never be a mom. Poor Jen: Justin Theroux is toast now too. Poor Jen: she’s all alone again. And the 49-year-old actress has had enough of it all. She’d like the world to know she isn’t heartbroken and she isn’t desperate to get a man.
And quite frankly, she’s fed up with everyone treating her as if she’s damaged goods and sick and tired of people judging her for things they know nothing about.
In a rare bare-all interview with InStyle magazine, the Office Christmas Party star lashes out at the harassment she receives in Hollywood and how she believes women are treated unfairly in the media.
Six months after her split from actor and screenwriter Justin Theroux (47) she also opens up about being single again – and how women are often far more cold and calculating in their criticism of her than men.
“It’s pretty crazy – the misconceptions that ‘Jen can’t keep a man’ and ‘Jen refuses to have a baby because she’s selfish and committed to her career’,” she says. “Or that I’m sad and heartbroken.
“First, with all due respect, I’m not heartbroken. Second, those are reckless assumptions [about having a baby]. No one knows what’s going on behind closed doors.”
Ever since she and Brad (54) split in 2005 and he went on to have six kids with Angie (43), Jen has been painted as the childless career woman who was so driven in her climb up the A-list ladder she refused to give poor Brad kids.
“No one considers how insensitive that might be,” she says. “They don’t know what I’ve been through medically or emotionally.”
It’s sexist too, she says. “I’ve definitely had my fair share of sexism in the media. Women are picked apart and pitted against one another based on looks and clothing and superficial stuff.
“When a couple breaks up in Hollywood, it’s the woman who’s scorned. The woman is sad and alone. She’s the failure. F that. When was the last time you read about a divorced, childless man referred to as a spinster?”
WHEN it comes to harassment in the workplace, Jen says she’s been treated worse by women than men. “I’ve definitely had some sloppy moves made on me by other actors and I handled it by walking away. In my personal experience I’ve been treated worse verbally by some women in the industry.”
They’re the ones who make her feel inferior and less of a woman for not having children.
The Golden Globe winner has also had
In the eyes of the world she’ll always be ‘lonely, panicking, childless Jen’
enough of the ridiculous headlines that claim one week that she’s about to have twins and the next that she’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
“For the most part I can sit back and laugh because they’ve become more and more absurd. There are definitely moments of not being balanced and poised, but I do that in my own personal space.
“I focus on my work, my friends, my animals and how we can make the world a better place. That other stuff is junk food that needs to go back in its drawer.”
This wasn’t the first time Jen addressed her detractors. In an essay for American Huffington Post in 2016 she said she’d “worked too hard in life and this career to be whittled down to a sad, childless human”.
“For the record: I’m not pregnant,” she added. “What I am is fed up. I’m fed up with the sport-like scrutiny and bodyshaming that occurs daily under the guise of journalism.
“Here’s where I come out on this topic: we’re complete with or without a mate, with or without a child. We get to decide for ourselves what’s beautiful when it comes to our bodies. That decision is ours and ours alone.”
It’s a statement with which many agree – including The Guardian columnist Barbara Ellen. But she says it’s unlikely the world will ever see Jen in a different light.
“Sympathetic interviews are also part of it ‘never being over’,” Ellen writes. “Sensitive, cruel, sisterly, thoughtful – whatever the nature of the approach it all helps to reinforce what might come to be known in country and western circles as The Ballad of Poor Jen.”
In the eyes of the world she’ll always be “lonely, panicking, childless Jen” – and it’s just plain awful, she adds.
“Why does this happen only to women? Jen’s Friends co-star Matthew Perry doesn’t have children but no one seems worried about his poor doomed testes.”
Perhaps part of the reason Jen is picked on quite so much is she refuses to put herself out there at all.
She doesn’t have Twitter, Facebook or Instagram accounts, although she says she’ll dip into Instagram and “sort of be a voyeur – I’m a creeper”.
But she’s always annoyed with herself afterwards. “I’ll be like, ‘That just took up an hour of your life and it’s gone in 60 seconds.’ It feels like we’re losing connection.”
WHAT Jen isn’t losing is her star power. She’ll soon be lighting up the silver screen in musical comedy Dumplin’ , alongside Dolly Parton. The film, based on the young adult novel by Julie Murphy, sees plus-size teen Willowdean Dickinson (played by Australian actress Danielle Macdonald) sign up for her mother’s Miss Teen Blue Bonnet pageant.
Willowdean’s mom, Rosie (Aniston), is a former pageant queen and her daughter’s decision to enter the competition as protest escalates when other teens follow her lead, transforming the pageant and their small Texas town. “I had so much fun,” Jen says. “There are women devoting their lives to training young girls for pageants and it’s the real deal. I loved those women and really enjoyed getting into the mindsets. It’s a beautiful mother-daughter story.”
The film is about redefining beauty and how society interprets what beauty is, she adds.
“A swimsuit body is a body in a swimsuit, no matter what that body is. It’s time to just stop thinking beauty is in the shape of a size four and the right butt size and the right measurements. It’s just old. We’ve been there. Let’s move on.”
She also co-stars with Adam Sandler in the Netflix comedy Murder Mystery and loves what she does.
“I think I’ll always want to keep acting as long as there’s a desire for me to do it. As long as I’m fulfilled in other ways creatively, spiritually and all of that stuff, I know I could do this until they put me in a home.”
If she’s still alone at that stage, it will be her choice. And she’ll be just fine.