What the global reaction to THAT picture says about us
Serious adult people have a lot to think about right now, what
with Brexit finally
happening, the Trump trial, and our
ongoing climate angst. Only, last week, something more significant
happened: Brad and Jen crossed paths! It was a moment full of love, longing, and a passion just short of
leg humping – and that was merely the watching world enraptured by photographer Emma Mcintyre’s
poignant images.
‘BRAD & JEN! BRAD & JEN! THIS
IS NOT A DRILL!’ scream-tweeted
one enthusiast, speaking for us
all. The next day, Jen became meme-tastic once more when she
shared snaps from before and after
her victory. The second image
showed the vintage Dior gown
she’d worn on the edge of her bath. ‘Brad removed this!’ cried everyone, breathing into so many paper bags. Then Jennifer’s old mucker Courteney Cox provoked hysteria by liking a series of tweets
about the couple still being in love. Cue global emotional breakdown.
I’m 48, and increasingly find it hard to care about anything, and yet – even as I type this – I admit it, I’m smitten. Such beauty, such blondeness. Damn it, she’s even
wearing a slip dress, as if it were 1999 again. Better still, it is as if time has been redeemed, and – as in Jane Austen’s Persuasion – starcrossed lovers could be reunited, older, wiser, in love’s full force.
And then I remind myself: he
dumped her, for another woman, having been overheard having animal-sound-effect sex with
Angelina Jolie.
Wherever one stands on the ‘Braniston’ spectrum, the most satisfying thing about this moment was that Brad and Jen were very
much Jen and Brad; the latter hanging about adoringly for his ex
in her hour of triumph, reaching for her, refusing to drop her wrist as she moves on, and generally
appearing like a devoted swain.
For a woman who, for so many years after their 2005 separation, was miscast as ‘poor Jen’ rather
than the ‘f** king fantastic Jen’ she so clearly is, this moment
of conquest – personal and professional – must be sweet. When Aniston and Pitt divorced, we were still mired in the post- Bridget Jones era, in which single women continued to be stigmatised as a problem needing to be solved; not least single women of middle age.
Today, as she cruises into her
sixth decade while looking no
older than when she first lit up our screens, she has a terrific career, terrific friends, a terrific life full stop. She is a woman very clearly
at the height of her powers. Not
only did Jen star in the world’s most successful sitcom – currently enjoying a revival among Gen Z Netflix groupies – she has also made over 30 movies with hot
new prospects forever piling up. Witness this latest Best Actress award for The Morning Show.
Poor this woman is not.