Earlier this week, actress Jennifer Aniston revealed that she spent years โtrying to get pregnant” all while dealing with prying members of the press.
“It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road,” the Friends alum explained of her several IVF attempts in a new interview, published on Wednesday, November 9. “My late 30s, 40s, I’d gone through really hard s**t, an if it wasn’t for going through that, I would’ve never become who I was meant to be.โ
Part of these hardships, she revealed, included trying nearly โeverythingโ to conceive โ all while tabloids ran seemingly ceaseless headlines scrutinizing her body and โbaby bump.โ
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“I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it,โ she shared. โI was throwing everything at it. “I would’ve given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favor.’ You just don’t think it. So here I am today. The ship has sailed.”
Amid these efforts, Aniston said the endless media speculation surrounding a potential pregnancy only exacerbated this pain, furthering โthe narrative that I was just selfish.โ
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“I just cared about my career. And God forbid a woman is successful and doesn’t have a child,โ she said, noting that these false notions also seeped into swirling rumors surrounding her love life.
โThe reason my husband left me, why we broke up and ended our marriage, was because I wouldn’t give him a kid. It was absolute lies,โ the actress said. โI don’t have anything to hide at this point.”
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This is far from the first time Anniston has gotten real about her complex relationship with pregnancy and the press, penning a powerful OpEd for HuffPo back in 2016.
“For the record, I am not pregnant,” she wrote. “What I am is fed up. Iโm fed up with the sport-like scrutiny and body shaming that occurs daily under the guise of ‘journalism,’ the ‘First Amendment’ and ‘celebrity news.’โ
The star also detailed the harassment that she and her then-husband, Justin Theroux, faced amid the media frenzy.
“Every day my husband and I are harassed by dozens of aggressive photographers staked outside our home who will go to shocking lengths to obtain any kind of photo, even if it means endangering us or the unlucky pedestrians who happen to be nearby,” she shared, condemning “the objectification and scrutiny we put women” as being “absurd and disturbing.”
“Hereโs where I come out on this topic: we are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child,” she said, reiterating that “we get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies.”
“That decision is ours and ours alone,” The Morning Show star continued. “Letโs make that decision for ourselves and for the young women in this world who look to us as examples. Letโs make that decision consciously, outside of the tabloid noise. We donโt need to be married or mothers to be complete. We get to determine our own ‘happily ever after’ for ourselves.”
