14 DAY TRIAL // Jennifer Aniston is 45 years old, a very successful actress and businesswoman, engaged to actor Justin Theroux for 2 years, currently unmarried and not a mother. For years, since before her divorce from Brad Pitt in 2005, she’s been the subject of countless rumors regarding her plans to become a mother or to marry again.
In a new interview with Carson Daly for The Today Show, to promote her new film “Life of Crime,” Jennifer talks about how she’s a feminist and how much she resents it that people equate a woman’s worth to how many children she has or whether she’s married.
She’s speaking from experience, having had to endure years’ worth of rumors and gossip about the state of her womb. It’s no exaggeration to say that, at one point, she couldn’t even have a larger meal because the next day the tabloids would be filled with paparazzi shots of her “baby bump” and “insiders’” accounts of how happy she was that she was finally a mother.
People need to stop paying attention to all that, Jennifer seems to be saying. The interview is available below, embedded at the end of the article.
“I don’t have this sort of checklist of things that have to be done, and… if they’re not checked, then I’ve failed some part of my feminism or my being a woman or my worth and my value as a woman,” she says.
She may not have had a child, but that was her choice and she shouldn’t be judged as a woman based on it. “I've birthed a lot of things and I feel like I've mothered many things. And I don't think it's fair to put that pressure on people,” she continues.
Just like motherhood doesn’t make her any less of a woman, not being married doesn’t either. Yet it’s what people keep asking her about.
“It's always such an issue of, like, ‘Are you married yet? Have you had babies yet?’ And it's just constant,” Aniston says, adding that she just can’t understand why people are so interested in these two things, at least where she’s concerned.
Other than that, the former “Friends” actress says she’s more than happy with the evolution of her career after the show wrapped 10 years ago. These days, she’s looking to branch out and do roles that are somehow outside her comfort zone, and take up projects that present more of a challenge than the one before.
“I feel like I've grown up three times. I've had an incredible evolution. I keep seeing all these little lifetimes that I've lived and they're all so wonderful. I feel very grateful to my evolution and my history and all involved. I would never exchange it for anything,” the actress concludes.