Jennifer Aniston calls years of pregnancy rumors ‘nasty and hurtful’

If you’re a millennial, then you likely remember how intense the early aughts were in regard to the tabloids. Looking back, it seems like no celebrity was spared from snark or terrible rumors—Jennifer Aniston least of all.

During her marriage to Brad Pitt, Aniston was practically on the cover of every tabloid in existence, every week, with headlines surrounding her fertility and if she wanted kids. After that marriage ended in 2005, those headlines and rumors persisted for years.

In 2016, she wrote an essay about her experience for Huffpo. But now, at 52, she’s opening up about how hurtful it all was—and in some ways, still is.

Aniston tells The Hollywood Reporter about the assumption many people have that she “chose career over kids,” and just how painful it was to endure those assumptions and rumors.

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“People certainly project onto you and all that, but my job is to go, ‘Listen, I’ll show you what I’m capable of, and you decide if you want to subscribe,'” Aniston says about her personal life. “So you disappear as much as you can, you have fun, you take on these weird roles, you don’t give a s—, you enjoy yourself, you remember that you have a gorgeous group of friends and your life is blessed and you do the best that you can.”

When it comes to the pregnancy rumors and endless speculation about her womb, Aniston says she used to take it “very personally,” because no one knows the truth.

“It’s like, ‘You have no clue what’s going with me personally, medically, why I can’t … can I have kids?'” she explained. “They don’t know anything, and it was really hurtful and just nasty.”

She also says she can see similarities between tabloid life back then and social media now—except with social media, it’s a free for all for anyone to say anything, anytime.

“What the tabloids and the media did to people’s personal lives back then, regular people are doing now [on social media]. Although I haven’t seen a tabloid in so long. Am I still having twins? Am I going to be the miracle mother at 52?”

During a 2018 interview with InStyle, Aniston talked about the pressure all women face to be mothers.

“No one knows what’s going on behind closed doors. No one considers how sensitive that might be for my partner and me. They don’t know what I’ve been through medically or emotionally. There is a pressure on women to be mothers, and if they are not, then they’re deemed damaged goods,” she said.

The bottom line here is two-fold: It’s no one’s business whether Jennifer Aniston wants to be a mother—yesterday, today, or tomorrow. It’s also never OK to speculate on a woman’s body and make assumptions about that body.

With so many women and moms struggling with their own body image, fertility issues, and endless speculation within their personal lives, having someone like Jennifer Aniston use her platform to say “No, it wasn’t OK that this happened to me” is invaluable.

You are enough—for who you are, for where you are today, for what you dream. And because a little reminder of that always helps, this cuff will keep the mantra close to heart.

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