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Jennifer Aniston has had enough of the false pregnancy rumors and body shaming.
“For the record, I am not pregnant. What I am is fed up,” the actress, 47, writes in a scathing essay titled “For the Record” posted on The Huffington Post Tuesday, in which she also asserts 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.”
Speculation recently flared up in June that Aniston was pregnant after paparazzi pictures surfaced from her vacation in the Bahamas with husband Justin Theroux. Reports claimed that Aniston had a “bump” in the pictures, which were taken of her in a bikini. A spokesperson for Aniston issued a statement denying the rumors. “What you see is her having just enjoyed a delicious big lunch and her feeling safe on private property,” the rep for Aniston told ET.
“This past month in particular has illuminated for me how much we define a woman’s value based on her marital and maternal status,” she writes. “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 continued, “We 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. 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. Let’s make that decision consciously, outside of the tabloid noise. We don’t need to be married or mothers to be complete. We get to determine our own ‘happily ever after’ for ourselves.”
Aniston said that she “may become a mother someday, and since I’m laying it all out there, if I ever do, I will be the first to let you know.” But added that for now, “I resent being made to feel ‘less than’ because my body is changing and/or I had a burger for lunch and was photographed from a weird angle and therefore deemed one of two things: ‘pregnant’ or ‘fat.’ ” Not to mention the painful awkwardness that comes with being congratulated by friends, coworkers and strangers alike on one’s fictional pregnancy (often a dozen times in a single day).”
The Mother’s Day star urged readers to help put a stop to the “objectification and scrutiny” all women go through. “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,” she explained. “We use celebrity ‘news’ to perpetuate this dehumanizing view of females, focused solely on one’s physical appearance, which tabloids turn into a sporting event of speculation.”
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 bull—.”
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