Friends star Jennifer Aniston is fed up, and so is four-time Wimbledon champion Sania Mirza. Aniston posted a sharp criticism of the media for continually targeting women for their body size, while Mirza said in an interview that regardless of her professional achievements, she was still being asked questions about when she would “settle down,” as if her life was incomplete without motherhood.
In a recent post aptly titled ‘For The Record‘ on news blog site The Huffington Post, Aniston called out news agencies that have been indulging in blatant body-shaming, and fueling pregnancy rumours.
“For the record, I am not pregnant. What I am is fed up. I’m fed up with the sport-like scrutiny and body shaming that occurs daily under the guise of ‘journalism,’ the ‘First Amendment’ and ‘celebrity news’,” she wrote. This post was her response to all those reporters and photographers who harassed her about her apparent weight gain. Some tabloid magazines carried stories that suggested Aniston and her husband Justin Theroux were having a child, because she was spotted sporting a “possible baby bump“; others simply shamed her weight gain.
Addressing the deliberate objectification of women that some news agencies carry, Aniston highlighted a question that women frequently face: “When are you settling down?”
“I’m not in pursuit of motherhood because I feel incomplete in some way, as our celebrity news culture would lead us all to believe. I resent being made to feel ‘less than’ because my body is changing and/or I had a burger for lunch and was photographed from a weird angle and therefore deemed one of two things: ‘pregnant’ or ‘fat’. Not to mention the painful awkwardness that comes with being congratulated by friends, coworkers and strangers alike on one’s fictional pregnancy (often a dozen times in a single day),” she wrote.
It’s been two days since the post was published, and Hollywood has been supportive. Melissa McCarthy, frequently called ‘fat’, told Entertainment Tonight that she was one hundred thousand billion per cent behind Aniston. “Everybody needs to stop tearing down women,” she said.
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In an unrelated incident, during an interview with senior journalist Rajdeep Sardesai, tennis star Sania Mirza responded with a sentiment similar to that expressed in Aniston’s post. During the launch of her autobiography Ace Against Odds, Sardesai questioned her on when she planned on settling down. Visibly miffed, Sania had this to say: “That’s the question I face all the time as a woman, that all women have to face. The first is marriage and then it’s motherhood. Unfortunately, that’s when we’re settled, and no matter how many Wimbledons we win or number ones in the world we become, we don’t become settled. But eventually it will happen, not right now. And when it does happen I’ll be the first one to tell everybody when I plan to do that.”
An embarrassed Sardesai apologised on air, admitting that this wasn’t a question he would have asked a male athlete.
Photo credit: PMHollywoodlife.Files.Wordpress.com and Peta India