Jennifer Aniston Body-Shames the Tabloids
The way I am portrayed by the media is simply a reflection of how we see and portray women in general, measured against some warped standard of beauty. Sometimes cultural standards just need a different perspective so we can see them for what they really are — a collective acceptance… a subconscious agreement. We are in charge of our agreement. Little girls everywhere are absorbing our agreement, passive or otherwise. And it begins early. The message that girls are not pretty unless they’re incredibly thin, that they’re not worthy of our attention unless they look like a supermodel or an actress on the cover of a magazine is something we’re all willingly buying into.
.. And that’s particularly so because Jen emphasizes the fact that the paparazzi’s treatment of her is simply an extreme extension of how the culture at large has been treating the women who are both part of, and subject to, its whims. Despite all the progress feminism has made in the past decades, we still live in an age that treats women’s bodies as objects of communal ownership. An age that effectively regards women not just as people, but also as vessels—waiting to be filled and made complete by way of partners and children and families.
.. Celebrities now have more say over their own brands via the messages they put forward in their Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and Snapchat feeds; paparazzi, as a result, now distinguish themselves by seeking, in particular, the images and the stories that celebrities don’t see fit to share themselves. Which often means post-gym pictures and makeup-free pictures and, yes, speculative-baby-bump pictures.