The secret sorrow that Jen’s beauty can’t mask
JeNNIFeR ANISTON appears on a magazine cover wearing tiny Yves Saint Laurent leather hotpants a supermodel might struggle to get away with — and we gape in awe.
how could a 51-year- old woman look so hot? how could the Rachel we fell in love with a quarter of a century ago on Friends — still one of the most watched TV shows — so flagrantly have it all?
Unblemished by two disastrous marriages — first to Brad Pitt who dumped her for Angelina Jolie, and then to a loser called Justin Theroux — Jen is the Petra Pan of hollywood. As Shakespeare wrote of Cleopatra: ‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.’
And yet, tucked away in her article in Interview magazine, it emerged that the woman who has defied age and earned millions has one haunting regret: she never had the chance to be a mum.
In her 50s and way past the age where a woman can conceive naturally, she still heartbreakingly imagines being a mother.
‘It’s not so much what I see myself doing, it’s more like a little screenshot in my brain, where I hear the ocean, I hear the laughter, I see the kids running,’ she says.
For all her fame and fortune, Jennifer spoke to all women everywhere who have longed for the one thing they thought they could take for granted, but failed to get — the inalienable right to become a mum.
I suppose that’s part of her appeal — Jen speaks with disarming honesty about a silent sorrow shared by so many. Forget the hotpants and the fabulous hair, we childless women — or most of us — would trade all that in a heartbeat for the chance of holding our own child in our arms.
Around one in four women over 40 never have kids, sometimes of their own choosing but mostly because of the sad happenchance of biology.
Many of us dream of the laughter of children who look up at us with our own eyes, and of youngsters running into our arms for comfort and joy.
I’m lucky. Despite being infertile, I have my wonderful stepson Max.
he’s a foot taller than me, clearly not an inherited trait, but has a kindness in his heart that I hope I have contributed to.
So my message to Jennifer is one of hope — you don’t have to give birth to be a mum. And if you get back with Brad Pitt, you could always become stepmum to his six kids.