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How Jennifer Aniston’s Devastating Revelation Is a Lesson to Us All
Can we please stop asking this damn question!
“We are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child … that decision is ours and ours alone.” — Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer Aniston has endured decades, yes, decades of interrogation over her womb!
While male actors of her rank are asked questions about their acting ambitions, philanthropic endeavors, and political opinion, the media has tirelessly obsessed over Jennifer Aniston’s reproductive status.
Over the years, you could almost hear the audible exasperations as they rippled across the globe. When will this barren female finally do what is expected of her?
A woman could eradicate poverty, find a cure for cancer, and solve the climate crisis, but these achievements recoil into oblivion if she hasn’t fulfilled her “womanly” obligation and become a mother.
Society equates womanhood to motherhood.
If a woman is not a mother, what even is she? This strikes fear into the heart of the patriarchy. Who knows what mayhem women might get up to when they aren't chained to children?
The message is simple. Women without children are to be feared and ostracised. We must keep them in their place and limit their exposure in case this obscenity is contagious!
The scale of a woman’s achievement is all too often reduced to her reproductive habits.
It’s one thing when a woman chooses not to have children. Yes, she faces stigma, pressure, and being othered; believe me, I’ve been there. But women who make this choice are empowered with a sense of control. We may be attacked for our choice, but our sense of knowing arms us for this inevitable battle.
When a woman desperately wants children and biology or life circumstances are not playing ball, can you imagine the heartache? The scab of childlessness is picked every time a woman is asked “when” she is going to have children or “why” she doesn’t already have them.
The world is cruel, scathing, and particularly invisibling for childless women.
