Jennifer Aniston is FINE! Please stop assuming otherwise!
In a new interview with Elle, the Friends actress makes clear she’s tired of fans assuming it hasn’t been her month or even her year — just because she isn’t a wife.
Related: Gwyneth Paltrow Still Doesn’t Live With Her Husband
She hits back at the very notion women should be looking for a “happy ending” in being married with kids, saying:
“We live in a society that messages women: By this age, you should be married; by this age, you should have children. That’s a fairy tale. That’s the mold we’re slowly trying to break out of.
Why do we want a happy ending? How about just a happy existence? A happy process? We’re all in process constantly.”
She also points out it’s ONLY women whose lives are measured against this ridiculous ideal — never men!
“What quantifies happiness in someone’s life isn’t the ideal that was created in the ’50s. It’s not like you hear that narrative about any men…
That’s part of sexism — it’s always the woman who’s scorned and heartbroken and a spinster. It’s never the opposite. The unfortunate thing is, a lot of it comes from women. Maybe those are women who haven’t figured out that they have the power, that they have the ability to achieve a sense of inner happiness.”
Lest folks think this protest is in response to her own perceived failure to live up to the gold standard, Aniston explains she’s always been ambivalent about the concept of matrimonial bliss:
“I also was never a kid who sat around and dreamed about a wedding, you know? Those were never my fantasies. When I was first popped the question, it was so foreign to me…
My priorities weren’t about finding partnership and who am I gonna marry and what am I gonna wear on my wedding day. I was building houses with shoe boxes and toilet paper and felt. It was always about finding a home that felt safe. And I’m sure, because I was from a divorced-parent home, that was another reason I wasn’t like, ‘Well, that looks like a great institution.’”
Jen is clearly sick of the assumption she’s in some kind of pain just because she’s divorced.
According to her, those decisions were only made to make her happier, and she doesn’t regret them at all! She attests:
“I don’t feel a void. I really don’t. My marriages, they’ve been very successful, in [my] personal opinion. And when they came to an end, it was a choice that was made because we chose to be happy, and sometimes happiness didn’t exist within that arrangement anymore. Sure, there were bumps, and not every moment felt fantastic, obviously, but at the end of it, this is our one life and I would not stay in a situation out of fear. Fear of being alone. Fear of not being able to survive.
To stay in a marriage based on fear feels like you’re doing your one life a disservice. When the work has been put in and it doesn’t seem that there’s an option of it working, that’s okay. That’s not a failure. We have these clichés around all of this that need to be reworked and retooled, you know? Because it’s very narrow-minded thinking.”
Oh, and as for not having kids? She’s fine with that too, and frankly is past caring if people believe her:
“It’s such a shallow lens that people look through. It’s the only place to point a finger at me as though it’s my damage — like it’s some sort of a scarlet letter on me that I haven’t yet procreated, or maybe won’t ever procreate.”
She admits she actually finds the idea of having children “kind of frightening”:
“Some people are just built to be wives and have babies. I don’t know how naturally that comes to me.”
But again, she stresses, that’s OK too!
And hey, if she does decide to have a child, she may not even NEED a partner!
“Who knows what the future holds in terms of a child and a partnership — how that child comes in…or doesn’t? And now with science and miracles, we can do things at different times than we used to be able to.”
Ch-ch-check out Jen’s entire interview, including quite a lot about working with hero Dolly Parton on Dumplin’ HERE.
And see her cover shot and more (below)!
[Image via FayesVision/WENN.]
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