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Opinion: Jennifer Aniston should blame Hollywood, not the tabloids, for body shaming

Jennifer Aniston attends the Los Angeles premiere of "Mother's Day" on April 13.
(Richard Shotwell / Invision / Associated Press)
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I think Jennifer Aniston is a terrific actress. She’s funny, and she has handled herself with grace through the drama of her very public private life over the years. So, of course, I gobbled up her Huff Post opinion piece on her anger at being a perpetual tabloid target.

There’s no question that she’s the perfect person to weigh in on a celebrity culture that both fuels and feeds off tabloid photos and stories. In the category of people most stalked by photographers without explicitly inviting it (so that leaves out the entire Kardashian family), she’s certainly up there with Kate Middleton, the wife of Prince William.

It’s refreshing to hear Aniston address the gossip head on and say that she’s not pregnant (not that I ever thought she was) and decry a culture that holds that women are not complete unless they have babies. I applaud her for being unapologetic about not having a baby. That is really the best takeaway from her piece. And if she had been really brave, she might have added: “I’m 47 years old, and the possibility that I’m going to birth my own kids is slim to none. And, that’s fine. If I had wanted them, I would have hustled and had them.”

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Here’s the reality — tabloids didn’t create our body-shaming culture.

The tabloid pursuit of her phantom pregnancy is less about buying into societal norms than it is about pure gawking. Which she gets: “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.’”

As a woman who judges every dress she puts on by whether it makes her stomach look pooched out, I cannot fathom the mental pain she goes through. (And, by the way, I’ll admit I saw the supposedly telltale photos of her in a bikini — and she looks neither fat nor pregnant.)

But here’s the reality — tabloids didn’t create our body-shaming culture. Fashion magazines and the entertainment industry created it and perpetuate it. Tabloids may be co-conspirators, but if every tabloid in the country folded tomorrow, virtually every leading actress in a hit TV show or movie would still be a size 2 and would still attract unwanted attention in fashion magazines or other celebrity-focused magazines (that are not tabloids) and blogs if they gained weight. Yes, I know there are some famous women who are exceptions — but that’s just it, they are exceptions. Look at all the actresses — Aniston included — on “Friends.” As the TV show got more popular and the actresses got famous, they all got skinnier. Probably because there was more interest in them for movies, TV interviews and magazine photo shoots, and they were just upping their physical game as they believed was necessary.

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And though Aniston certainly got famous off her acting work, she has also profited off a culture that prizes the enviable physique that she possesses and goes to a lot of trouble to maintain — she has done a zillion magazine photo shoots in gorgeous skimpy clothes, she has posed on the cover of fashion magazines, and she has a beauty contract with Aveeno that, I assume, is highly lucrative.

But Aniston is also a producer and wields a certain amount of power. According to the entertainment industry data base, IMDb, she has six projects in development that list her as a producer. If Aniston wants little girls not to take away the message that women are only beautiful if they are incredibly thin, she should use her clout to get some talented not-so-thin actresses cast in those movies she’s producing.

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