Jennifer Aniston Gets Real About How The Media Objectifies Women

Jennifer Aniston is one of our most thoughtful and grounded celebrities. Maybe it’s due to her rise to fame on Friends, but she’s always seemed weirdly accessible. Like the type of person whom you might see at a cookout telling dirty jokes and having a glass of wine with the crazy aunt. So when she decides to get real about celebrity and objectification, we listen. Aniston wrote an essay for the Huffington Post about how the media covers her, specifically relating to those false pregnancy rumours. “For the record, I am not pregnant,” she writes. “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.’” She writes about how she and husband Justin Theroux are continually harassed by paparazzi on the street. But the meat of the essay is when she gets real about the way the media covers celebrity women. “The objectification and scrutiny we put women through is absurd and disturbing,” she writes. “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.” Aniston says that the tabloids won’t be changing any time soon. “From years of experience, I’ve learned tabloid practices, however dangerous, will not change, at least not any time soon. What can change is our awareness and reaction to the toxic messages buried within these seemingly harmless stories served up as truth and shaping our ideas of who we are.” She’s dead right. Read the rest of the piece here.