In January 2005, Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt announced that following “much thoughtful consideration,” they were separating after five years of marriage.
The pair said at the time they would remain “committed and caring friends with great love and admiration for one another,” and emphasized that their split was not caused by “any of the speculation reported by the tabloid media.”
Of course, the overarching narrative of their divorce — which was filed in March that year — was that Jen was so fiercely ambitious and devoted to her career that she had “refused” to have a baby with Brad, positioning him as the heartbroken man and her as the villain.
These theories weren’t helped by the fact that within less than a year after his separation from Jen, Brad had publicly established himself as a doting father and family man alongside his new partner, Angelina Jolie — with whom he went on to share six children.
From the word “go,” Jennifer has continually denied claims that she had flatly refused to have children, saying in her first interview after their divorce back in 2006 that she was “really pissed off” that such sexist and invasive reports had been taken as truth.
And in the 16 years since, Jennifer — like many women across the world — has been forced to tackle the same pervasive and relentless questioning about her body and why she doesn’t have children, intertwined with societal norms peddling the narrative that childless women are selfish, cold, or confused.
To make matters more frustrating for the Friends star, her lengthy career in the spotlight has been besieged by regular reports that she’s pregnant — particularly during her three-year marriage to Justin Theroux.
In fact, the speculation became so intense in 2016 that Jen was compelled to address the tabloid media directly in a scathing essay she wrote for HuffPost, slamming the sexist notion that “women are somehow incomplete, unsuccessful, or unhappy if they’re not married with children.”
“For the record, I am not pregnant. What I am is fed up,” she wrote. “Here’s where I come out on this topic: we are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child. We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies. That decision is ours and ours alone.”
