Jennifer Aniston has done something she’s never done before: addressed gossip. She wrote a scathing piece called ‘For The Record’ for The Huffington Post addressing swirling pregnant rumours and what it means for women and their value in society.
She started off the op-ed by saying: “For the record, I am not pregnant. What I am is fed up.”
Though she mentions the safety issues that her husband and the general public have experienced from the paparazzi, she says this is not the only urgent issue at hand. She believes that the lengths these photographers go to to get pictures of her from certain angles reveals ‘the warped way we calculate a woman’s worth’.
She goes on to say that the pregnancy rumours reflect this even further:
“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.”
Jennifer believes that women should be valuable, and ‘complete’, with or without a partner, and with or without children. She has been victim to this devaluation the media portrays, with people spreading rumours just because she’s had ‘a burger for lunch’, or had her photo taken at a strange angle.
She says that if she does become a mother one day, she’ll be the first to tell the public about it. But in the meantime, we should be changing the way we consume tabloids and stop ‘buying the bullshit’. She urges the public to help decide what is beautiful when it comes to women’s 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.”
Read Jennifer Aniston’s full piece here.
