Five times the charm as Jennifer Aniston adorns the cover of Allure Magazine for the fifth time in her career. However, this time is a little different. With “Nothing to Hide” she shares everything from life as an actress to the deep personal pain she has faced.
When we think of Jennifer Aniston, words like glamorous, elegance and sophistication come to mind. A ‘cool’ and effortless beauty and of course, Rachel from the hit sitcom Friends.
We know she is a multi-award-winning actress, and a businesswoman as she launched a hair-care line – LolaVie which holds a simple and ambitious mission: “Create a product that is good for the environment, good for our hair, take out all the crappy chemicals, and have it perform,” says Aniston.
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As famous as Jennifer is, she has been facing a mountain in her private capacity, one that many women across the world can relate to – struggling to fall pregnant.
In the cover story interview, Jennifer invites Allure Magazine into her home –a picturesque scene– and once the conversation begins, Aniston immediately opens up:
Jennifers’ 30s and 40s
Jennifer shared that her 30s and 40s were the toughest years she had ever experienced. She said: “I would say my late 30s, 40s, I’d gone through really hard shit, and if it wasn’t for going through that, I would’ve never become who I was meant to be,” she says. “That’s why I have such gratitude for all those shitty things. Otherwise, I would’ve been stuck being this person that was so fearful, so nervous, so unsure of who they were.”
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Here she is referring to struggling with IVF and falling pregnant. Jennifer says: “I was trying to get pregnant. It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road.”
As this was the first time she’d ever opened up about her challenges, when the interviewer responded by saying that they had no idea.
Jennifer continued by saying, “Yeah, nobody does,” in her gracious way. “All the years and years and years of speculation… It was really hard. I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I 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.”
But she confidently confirms that she has “0 regrets.”
“I actually feel a little relief now because there is no more, ‘Can I? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.’ I don’t have to think about that anymore.”
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Media over the years
In true media fashion, throughout Jennifer’s career, there has always been a negative narrative about why Aniston hasn’t had kids. Headlines splattered over tabloids speculated that she was too career-focused or just wasn’t interested in having a family. One even went as far as saying that this was the reason why her marriage failed. Jen’s put the rumours to rest:
“I just cared about my career. And God forbid a woman is successful and doesn’t have a child. And the 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. I don’t have anything to hide at this point.”
This is still a current narrative that women are facing. Society makes us feel that we are required to meet certain milestones like marriage and having kids by certain ages to be considered successful. But times have changed! Women can be career-focused first or even share the load and spread the focus equally. There is room for both.
Her next trip down the aisle?
Aniston was asked if she would ever get married again and we loved her answer. She said, “Never say never, but I don’t have any interest…I’d love a relationship. Who knows? There are moments I want to just crawl up in a ball and say, ‘I need support.’ It would be wonderful to come home and fall into somebody’s arms and say, ‘That was a tough day.’”
Aniston ends by saying, “I feel like I’m coming through a period that was challenging and coming back into the light… I have had to do personal work that was long overdue, parts of me that hadn’t healed from the time I was a little kid. I’m a very independent person. Intimacy has always been a little here,” she extends her hand an arm’s length in front of her. “I’ve realized you will always be working on stuff. I am a constant work in progress. Thank God. How uninteresting would life be if we all achieved enlightenment and that was it?”
How powerful is that!
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Featured Image: @jenniferaniston/Instagram
