Actress Jennifer Aniston slammed the false pregnancy rumors in an essay she wrote for the Huffington Post.
In essay titled “For the Record,” Aniston brought out her frustration at being constantly hounded and stalked by paparazzi, who bother her endlessly, reported The Huffington Post. “For the record, I am not pregnant. What I am is fed up. I’m fed up with the sport-like scrutiny and body shaming that occurs daily under the guise of ‘journalism,’ the ‘First Amendment’ and ‘celebrity news’,” the actress wrote.
Speculation recently flared up in June that Aniston was pregnant after paparazzi pictures surfaced from her vacation in the Bahamas with husband Justin Theroux.
The “Friends” star asserted that women “are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child. We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies.” “This past month in particular has illuminated for me how much we define a woman’s value based on her marital and maternal status.
“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,” she said.
Aniston also addressed the issue of body shaming saying the conventional idea of beauty needs to be changed. “The way I am portrayed by the media is simply a reflection of how we see and portray women in general, measured against some warped standard of beauty. Sometimes cultural standards just need a different perspective so we can see them for what they really are a collective acceptance … A subconscious agreement,” she continued. The actress said the way beauty is projected on magazine covers is something which young girls carry in their minds and aspire to meet those standards of beauty when they grow up. “We are in charge of our agreement. Little girls everywhere are absorbing our agreement, passive or otherwise. And it begins early. The message that girls are not pretty unless they’re incredibly thin, that they’re not worthy of our attention unless they look like a supermodel or an actress on the cover of a magazine is something we’re all willingly buying into. This conditioning is something girls then carry into womanhood,” she added.
The actress said she was able to adjust to media scrutiny by not taking them seriously, but the rate on which it has increased has forced her to come open about it. “I used to tell myself that tabloids were like comic books, not to be taken seriously, just a soap opera for people to follow when they need a distraction. “But I really can’t tell myself that anymore because the reality is the stalking and objectification I’ve experienced first-hand, going on decades now, reflects the warped way we calculate a woman’s worth.”
Aniston wants people to take a stand with what they read: “Maybe some day the tabloids will be forced to see the world through a different, more humanized lens because consumers have just stopped buying the crap…”
PTI