For most young women, family reunions mean listening to the same questions over and over again: So, do you have a boyfriend yet? Are you getting married soon? Well, you are not getting any younger. When are you going to start trying to have kids?
Now, imagine being bombarded with this kind of questions every day, imagine being followed around as you try to do mundane activities (such as going to the gym, or getting groceries) and having people inquire about your relationship status. We complain to our friends about our relatives pestering us, but we consume celebrity gossip in every single social network. We objectify famous women to the point that they are not treated like people anymore. Last week Jennifer Aniston -- whom you might remember from lots of gossip and her iconic performance in "Friends" -- finally said that enough is enough.
The actress wrote a piece for the Huffington Post in which she complained about various topics, such as the constant invasion of privacy of celebrities and the way society sees women, regardless of whether they are famous or not. “The objectification and scrutiny we put women through is absurd and disturbing,” she says, and she is right. Aniston talked about the way tabloids sell the idea of the “perfect woman,” the one who is beautiful, sexy and feminine. This affects the self esteem of every single woman that has ever laid eyes on a magazine, but mostly this affects young girls. Unconsciously, we are letting them know from a very young age that the only way to be a happy woman is to be beautiful, thin, married and with one or two children.
Every day there are hundreds of hours of television time dedicated to talk about who is dating who, who is pregnant and who is letting herself go. Society consumes celebrity gossip like candy, because the people we see on screen are the people we all want to be. We forget that (setting the fame and the money aside) celebrities are people, too. People with bad photos and bad hair days, people that wear makeup and dismiss ten selfies before finally posting the one. We put celebrities on high pedestals and spend money and tears trying to be just like them. We ridicule women that do not look like supermodels, and we then criticize them for wearing makeup or going through plastic surgery in order to look like their idols. The double standards women have to put up with are too many, and it is up to us to put a stop to them.
“From years of experience, I’ve learned tabloid practices, however dangerous, will not change, at least not any time soon. What can change is our awareness and reaction to the toxic messages buried within these seemingly harmless stories served up as truth and shaping our ideas of who we are.”
Jennifer Aniston is right. There is still a long road to travel until we see the tabloid practices change for good, there will be rivers of ink trying to decide whether she is finally pregnant or not. There will be millions of articles and talk shows debating on why Taylor Swift changes boyfriends so fast. There will be one cover after another showing a supermodel with a Photoshopped figure in her best angle. But we can stop consuming this media.
If you are sick and tired of having to answer the same questions over family reunions, then stop wondering the same things about female celebrities. Stop perpetuating the notion that women are only completely happy when they are in a committed relationship and on the road to becoming mothers. The change is up to us. If we women refuse to play by the rules society tries to tie us down with we will be showing the next generation of little girls that there is more to being a woman than being beautiful and motherly.
