Poor Jen.” That was the phrase that started to follow Jennifer Aniston around not long after her divorce from Brad Pitt. One minute the Friends star was half of a Hollywood golden couple and owner of the world’s most lusted-after haircut. The next, she was an on-the-shelf spinster whose husband had ditched her for his sexy co-star. Would she ever find happiness? Would she be outpaced by her own biological clock? A public fixation with who she was dating or if she would have kids felt like a coded way of wondering whether she would ever summon the ability to overcome the humiliation. But this week, Aniston trashed the narrative.
Rubbishing ongoing rumours of her being too “selfish” or “career-obsessed” to become a mother, she revealed to Allure that she’d tried to have a child for many years but was unsuccessful. Now, she has accepted that biological motherhood isn’t something that’ll happen for her, telling the publication: “The ship has sailed.” Still, despite the struggles, 53-year-old Aniston says that how she feels now is “better than I ever did in my twenties or thirties even, or my mid-forties”. Poor Jen? Don’t patronise her. She’s one of Hollywood’s ultimate survivors.
