Back in July Jennifer Aniston penned a powerful op-ed for The Huffington Post about the media’s obsession with her becoming a mum. During an appearance on The Ellen Show this week she revealed why she chose to do that and about the media’s “disgusting” and “objectifying” treatment of women.
“I did it at first really for myself just to sort of—you know, how we write and don’t necessarily send it? Or at least since I was a kid I did that,” the marie claire cover star told the talk show host.
“I was just fed up with it,” she continued. “And I think these tabloids, all of us, need to take responsibility on what we ingest into our brains. Just because we are women, we have a uterus, we have a vagina, we have ovaries, we need to like, ‘Get to work, lady!’” Instead she added, “We, as women, do a lot of incredible things in this world other than just procreate—and not that that is not. But it’s like, we just get boxed in.”
“We have to support each other, especially at this time, to love each other, to support, and to be proud of women, of whatever your choice is in life,” she said. “It’s up to us what makes us happy and fulfilled.”
Jen also opens up about her current relationship with husband Justin Theroux, whom she married in August 2015.
“All I know is that I feel completely seen, and adored, in no matter what state,” she explained.
“There’s no part of me that I don’t feel comfortable showing, exposing. And it brings forth the best part of myself, because I care about him so much. And he’s such a good person. It hurts me to think of anything hurting him.”
Following Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s shock split in September, Jen was once again pulled into the fray. After 10 years of being pitted against Ange, and pitied in the media for her rocky love life and “lack” of children, there was no way they weren’t going to milk the headlines for all they could.
“My marital status has been shamed; my divorce status was shamed; my lack of a mate had been shamed; my nipples have been shamed,” she tells marie claire in the new issue, on sale now.
“It’s like, ‘Why are we only looking at women through this particular lens of picking us apart? Why are we listening to it?’ I just thought: I have worked too hard in this life and this career to be whittled down to a sad, childless human.”
Read Jen’s full interview in this month’s issue of marie claire, on sale now:
