When Jennifer Aniston got married for the second time to the actor Justin Theroux in August 2015, I was invited to BBC Broadcasting House to go live on the Radio 5 Live Emma Barnett show for a 10-minute segment discussing the significance of this news. Emma, one of the BBC’s most respected journalists, and I discussed the enduring appeal of Jennifer Aniston, why the world was so gripped by this latest development, and intriguingly, whether the wedding had actually even happened at all (there were many conspiracy theories). As Executive Features Director at Grazia magazine at the time, I was booked on the show as somewhat of an ‘expert’ on Jennifer’s love life, due to the inordinate amount of column inches, covers and articles the publication had devoted to the subject over many years. (Something I might add, that I now feel deeply uneasy about.)
Because, back then, the golden rule was if magazine sales were down, whack a Jen love life story – or even worse, if there was one going around, a pregnancy rumour – on the cover and watch the magazines fly off the shelves. A decade on, and it seems little has changed.
This summer, barely a week has gone by without some kind of update on Jen’s alleged new relationship with the handsome life coach and hypnotist, Jim Curtis, dominating headlines. The latest developments are ‘major’ and apparently constitute Jen ‘soft-launching’ her new man on social media.
In a ‘Thank you summer’ carousel dump of 18 photos on Instagram last week to her 45million followers, two stood out to the world's media. 1.) What is thought to be Jim’s dog – alongside her own two dogs (a blended family guys!), and 2.) Maybe, possibly, could it actually be? A silhouette, shadowy image of what appears to be Jim’s profile staring out at a sunset on a beach. BIG. NEWS.
As I type, images of the New York premiere for series 4 of Jennifer’s hit Apple TV show The Morning Show (for which Jennifer also features alongside her co-stars Reese Witherspoon, Karen Pittman, Marion Cotillard and Nicole Beharie on GLAMOUR’s current global September cover) are hitting news outlets across the world. And surprise, surprise, most of the headlines read something like this: “Jennifer Aniston’s New Boyfriend Jim Curtis Supports Her at The Morning Show Season 4 Premiere.” In reference to the fact that Jim can be seen observing proceedings at the side of the red carpet.
Ahead of season four of the Emmy-winning Apple+ series, the women of The Morning Show – Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Karen Pittman, Marion Cotillard, and Nicole Beharie – on flipping the narrative, redefining success, and having each other’s backs on set and in real life.
Listen, obviously, I have chosen to work in the business of showbiz and entertainment journalism for over two decades now, so I would therefore be a rank hypocrite if I wrote a whole article bemoaning our obsession with Jennifer Aniston’s love life and didn’t acknowledge that reporting on celebrities' love lives has been the meat and bones of my career. And that is because there is an undeniable demand for it. As long as humans are interested in other humans, there always will be.
The idolisation of celebrities and the desire to uncover the scandals, intrigues, and realities behind the rumours surrounding their private lives have existed since the dawn of time. To project our own fears, hopes, desires, and disappointments onto these feted strangers, whom we think we know – but never will – merely because they have provided comfort, distraction, and relief to us through their careers as performers is precisely why celebrity culture exists. And the massive pay cheques they receive and the glamorous lives that they lead are – supposedly – the payoff for having their privacy so ruthlessly invaded by the media. (Although again, this so-called justification theory that used to get bandied about so often in celebrity journalism, is not something I ascribe to these days.)
No, this is not just about idle gossip, but about something specifically to do with Jennifer Aniston and that is specifically to do with something insidious and baked into our society: the sexist fear of the single, childless woman.
At 56, Jennifer is twice divorced and has no children. And it is her backstory that can be seen as a confluence of circumstances that set her on course to be one of the most dissected women in the public eye, purely because of the fact that she has been perceived as ‘unlucky’ in love and hasn’t procreated.
It was, of course, the unparalleled global success of the TV show Friends, which saw her explode into public consciousness in the 1990s, heralded as America’s sweetheart with her golden girl-next-door good looks and warm, fun personality. In 2000, she married none other than Brad Pitt, who was, back then, the universal shorthand for the sexiest man alive and the planet’s most famous movie star.
Five years later came the rapid unravelling of that fairytale marriage and Brad’s new relationship with the femme fatale of Hollywood, Angelina Jolie. Ange was the antithesis of Jen with her dark, brooding looks, tattoos, edgy roles and wild background that included snogging her brother on the Oscars red carpet and wearing vials of her ex's blood around her neck. And so the stage was set for the ultimate Hollywood love triangle and the narrative to emerge as Jen, the figure of pity, the wronged woman, sad and lonely and childless.
The cruel barrage of speculation that then came as to why Jen’s marriage ended and why she and Brad had not had children, as the world watched him and Angelina quickly amass a brood of six kids, was endemic of exactly where the media was at that time: brutal, sexist and unforgiving.
More high-profile romances came Jen's way, including another marriage, incredible career success, riches, friendships, and a lifestyle beyond most people’s wildest dreams. And yet the narrative of ‘poor, sad, lonely Jen’ persisted because society could not cope with a single successful woman existing without being defined as a wife or a mother. And the most maddening thing about all of this? The fact remains that, despite Jennifer's own statements on the matter, the issue persists.
In 2018, she spoke to InStyle about the speculation about her split from Justin Theroux, saying, “It’s pretty crazy. The misconceptions are, ‘Jen can’t keep a man’ and ‘Jen refuses to have a baby because she’s selfish and committed to her career.’” She called the claims “reckless” because “No one knows what’s going on behind closed doors…They don’t know what I’ve been through medically or emotionally.”
In 2022, she elaborated on what she had been going through “behind closed doors”, revealing that she tried for many years to conceive a baby and had unsuccessful fertility treatment.
“It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road,’ she told Allure magazine, detailing multiple rounds of failed IVF, all the while having to deal with the press furiously speculating as to whether she was pregnant or not. “All those years and years of speculation,” she said, “It was really hard. I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it. I would’ve given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favour.’ You just don’t think it. So here I am today. That ship has sailed.”
What Jennifer is tapping into here and has so unwittingly become the poster girl of, is the misogyny and prejudice so inherent in society towards women without children, despite the fact that single child-free women are the fastest growing demographic, with 45% of women predicted to be single and childless by 2030.
I know firsthand about this prejudice, and it is a depressing reality I experience all the time. For many years, I was single, pursuing my career, with a string of unsuccessful romances under my belt. And all I would ever be asked, when not being grilled about my ‘wild sex life’ by bored married friends, was when I was going to ‘settle down’ and have kids. As if it were a choice, something I could just conjure up. Then, two years ago, at the age of 42, I finally met the love of my life. And within literal months of us dating, all anyone wanted to know was when we were going to start trying for a baby. It was an awful amount of pressure on me, my boyfriend and of course, my dwindling fertility.
But it also revealed the deep-rooted desire amongst society and humankind that we must, as women, procreate. And that women without kids – or who don’t want kids – are seen as an anomaly, like there’s something wrong with them. Single women and those without children are not allowed to just exist. This is something that Jennifer has also reflected on.
September dressing, sorted.
“We’re seeing women through that very narrow lens. If we don’t have a baby or a white picket fence or a husband, then we’re useless. We aren’t living up to our purpose,” she said in 2016.
For me, now, two years on from meeting my man and two rounds of unsuccessful fertility treatment later, I too know the pain of a challenging and unsuccessful baby-making road. Having lived through the devastating disappointment of unsuccessful IVF, it is now even more painful when the subject is raised. And now I look back on all those many stories I was involved in speculating on Jennifer’s fertility, and I can’t imagine how horrendous that must have been, and no amount of fame or fortune could – or should – justify that. Just this month, Jennifer told Vanity Fair how it impacted her, “I didn't have a strong enough constitution to not get affected by it. We're human beings, even though some people don't want to believe we are,” she said. “They think, You signed up for it, so you can take it. But we really didn't sign up for that.”
And while at 56, Jennifer has spoken of the fact that it's “almost a relief” that there's no longer speculation about her being pregnant, why is there still such a crazy circus of speculation around whether or not she’s got a man in her life? Why should this be such an issue? Why should this define her? Why can’t we leave the woman alone?
In 2016, Jen wrote an op-ed for The Huffington Post in which she outlined how ‘fed up’ she was about the media frenzy around her.
“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", she wrote. "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.” She’s right. And it’s wrong. And nearly 10 years after she wrote that, the frenzy around whether or not she has a new man in her life feeds into this.
I have never met Jennifer Aniston, but I would like to say to her that I am truly sorry for my past role in all of it, and I hope that the media can all try to do better when it comes to the manner in which we report on famous women’s lives. But overall, I hope that society stops viewing women’s value as related to their marital or motherhood status. As Jennifer herself said nearly 10 years ago, "It's shocking to me that we are not changing the conversation.” And it is.
For more from GLAMOUR's Assistant Editor and Entertainment Director, Emily Maddick, follow her on Instagram @emilymaddick.
