Imagine, if you haven’t been in the same situation, that you are a woman who really wants children, but can’t have them. Imagine year after year where your body tells you every month that it didn’t work out this time either. Imagine that you have to start dealing with the fact that the child you imagined spreading the duvet over may never be found, that no one will call you mum. Imagine IVF attempts, painful, expensive, invasive, and with no guarantee of success. Imagine that none of them are successful, and that hope is slowly extinguished. Imagine this happening to you while being watched by paparazzi and tabloids, who constantly wonder if you’ve gotten pregnant yet, speculate why not, and blame you for not having children. This is what happened to actress Jennifer Aniston. This week, Aniston gave an interview to Allure magazine in which she revealed that she had struggled with infertility and tried to have a child through IVF, without success — and that it had been an extra burden to do this while the weekly press was obsessed with whether she was pregnant or not. The story of Jennifer Aniston is about the arrogance of a powerful media industry that was soon to change forever – but which I myself managed to experience as a young budding reporter. FAMOUS GROUP OF FRIENDS: Jennifer Aniston became world famous through the TV series “Friends”, the comedy series about six friends in New York. Photo: Lynne Sladky / Ap It is about the complicated bond between stars and the public. And it is about a culture where there were no barriers to what one could say, think and demand to know about women and women’s bodies. In 1994 came the first episode of “Friends”, the comedy series about six friends in New York, which was a huge success and made the six main actors world famous. Aniston, with her comedic timing and her trend-setting hairstyle, became the most sought after. She became famous before reality TV’s breakthrough, long before influencers and YouTube stars could create their own careers. The list of faces that were recognizable worldwide was small. She became, in a sense, one of the last truly global stars. THE DESIRE: Jennifer Aniston quickly became the most popular in the series “Friends” from the 90s. But Aniston did not come across as a distant diva. She had the famous girl-next-door vibe, she was someone many identified with and looked to as a kind of friend. When she married Brad Pitt, the world’s biggest movie star, it was like a Cinderella story — Pitt belonged higher up in the starry sky, and pulled Aniston up there with him. The stage was set for a long fall when Pitt left Aniston for Angelina Jolie in 2005. Among Aniston’s faithful followers, many stood ready with bottomless stores of sympathy and pity. The weekly press was ready to exploit this feeling. There they quickly discovered that posts about a sad Jennifer sold better than posts about a happy Jennifer. In this narrative, the lack of children played a central role. A weekly journalist has told Slate Magazine that she had been asked to make a case that Aniston had had a miscarriage – even if it was just a fabrication. CINDERELLA STORY: Jennifer Aniston married Brad Pitt in 2000. Pitt belonged higher up in the starry sky, and pulled Aniston up there with him. Photo: Emma McIntyre / AFP The story that would become known as “Sad Jen” was born, and it would haunt Aniston for decades. Simmering beneath it all was a particularly American conservatism, where the skepticism of so-called “career women” was palpable. As early as 2002, US Weekly had a picture of Aniston and “Friends” colleague Courteney Cox on the cover, under the headline “Will They Ever Have Babies?”. Both Aniston and Cox were at this time married, famous and successful, but the fact that both were in their thirties without having had children was enough for the weekly magazine to awaken a peculiar mixture of pity and schadenfreude in its readers. These two women may look like they have it all, but do they have what really matters? Not that, no. And when Aniston got divorced, a tenacious tabloid story emerged that she had not wanted to “give Brad children” because she wanted to preserve her career and her flattering body. NEW STAR COUPLE: When Brad Pitt left Jennifer Aniston for fellow actress Angelina Jolie, rumors swirled that Pitt left Aniston because she could not have children. Photo: Francois Mori / AP In the late nineties and through most of the 2000s, magazines such as US Weekly, People and the like had a colossal power when it came to shaping the reputations of stars. Social media did not exist, and the stars had no ongoing channels to tell their stories about themselves. People’s curiosity about the private lives of famous people, which is and always has been great, could almost only be satisfied through tabloids and weekly magazines. These depended on bulk sales and large, dramatic bargains. These magazines served as entertainment, as entertainment on the beach and in the waiting room. They never came up with background material, longer lines of thought, or any insight into the stars’ actual emotional lives. What they offered were pictures and concrete news, with varying degrees of reliability. Are they going to get married? Are they going to have children? Have they broken up yet? Revealing photos and spicy news could be traded for big money. SPECULATION AND GOSSIP: Aniston’s “Friends” colleague Courteney Cox was also criticized for her childlessness in the gossip press before she had children in the early 2000s. Photo: MARIO ANZUONI / Reuters In little Norway, the headlines have never been so harsh and the methods so aggressive. But it’s worth remembering what it was like here, at the same time that the Aniston covers were knocking over newsstands in the US. As a reporter in my twenties, I could easily be ordered to ask celebrities if they were planning to have children soon. Norwegian weekly magazines and tabloid newspapers were obsessed with anyone who could be called “celebrity women”, with how their bodies could be described in print, with sexiest awards, with their relationship to gambling on sex, with whether they could imagine posing naked. In the US, both public debate and pop culture have come to terms with how the media treated famous women such as Anna Nicole Smith, Britney Spears, Tonya Harding and Monica Lewinsky. SETTLEMENT: In the US, the public debate has come to terms with how the media treated famous women. Among them is Monica Lewinsky. She came into the media spotlight after rumors that she was then-President Bill Clinton’s secret lover. Photo: A+E Networks / news In Norway, no one would feel bad about seeing themselves in the same, twenty-year-old mirror, not the press and not the public. The question of the relationship between stars and the press is complicated. Even then, it could not be reduced to a simple story of victim and persecuted. Most big stars know very well that their fame is built on the fact that a lot of people are fascinated by them and curious about their private life, and they usually have a professional and strategic relationship with what they say about themselves, where and when. It has been pointed out that Jennifer Aniston finished her most famous role eighteen years ago, and that her continued stardom is closely related to the curiosity people still have about her life. FAME: Jennifer Aniston finished her most famous role 18 years ago. Photo: JEAN-BAPTISTE LACROIX / AFP That is certainly true. But no one has asked her if she would like to have traded some of the fame for a little more consideration and distance. If it wouldn’t be better to go through one of the heaviest and burdensome and private processes there is, for the feelings and for the body, without the public standing outside and hammering on the door and scolding and melting and demanding to be let in.
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It was then that the press demanded access to the wombs of famous women – Expression
