Sunday, Jul 20, 2008
We've seen her laugh, we've seen her cry. We've seen her almost-exposed breast. Will we ever get enough of Jennifer Aniston?
Photo by Paul Fenton/Keystone
Jennifer Aniston
Nov 26, 2005 | Hey, anyone know what's going on with Jennifer Aniston these days?
That's a joke, naturally. 2005 began with the New Year's announcement that the former "Friends" star was separating from her hunky husband, Brad Pitt; now, heading home for the holidays, we'll pass airport newsstands showcasing the December issue of GQ -- which for the first time ever features a woman (Aniston) as one of its "Men of the Year" cover subjects. The intervening months have delivered unto us Aniston cover stories in September's Vanity Fair and November's Elle, along with hundreds of items about the suddenly-single actress in weekly magazines, tabloids and gossip columns. It's safe to say that many Americans know more about how Jennifer Aniston is faring than we do about some of the cousins and siblings with whom we just broke bread at Thanksgiving.
That messy Hollywood breakups are the stuff of American obsession is not news. But we have notoriously short attention spans. Even the tawdriest of Hollywood imbroglios hold us rapt for a month or two, tops. Remember Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez? Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow? Paltrow and Pitt? Remember Julia Roberts leaving Keifer Sutherland at the altar? Remember Billy Crudup abandoning eight-months' pregnant Mary-Louise Parker for Claire Danes? Remember how we got bored with all those stories and moved on?
If this year is any indication, we do not have the capacity for boredom when it comes to Jennifer Aniston and her tale of betrayal, loneliness and redemption. So intense has our preoccupation with her been that it's easy to imagine press-shy celebrities like Julia Roberts rapping on the door of Us Weekly: "Um, I had twins? I totally have baby pictures? Anyone?"
How has Aniston managed to hold our attention when so little else -- from the victims of Hurricane Katrina to the bust-up of Renée Zellweger's marriage -- can? The 36-year-old former sitcom star with a killer body, famous head of hair, and affable demeanor never got this much attention when she was actually on television every week, or even when she was married to a bronzed god of cinema. Can we only cathect to a woman who has been made vulnerable? Do we like her because she's a survivor? Or are we responding to something even older and more basic than that -- a compelling story?
I called media professionals who have kept Aniston in the spotlight this year to see if they could offer any insight into what has turned 2005 into Aniston Horribilis.
"It's easy to make a case that this has been the story of the year," said Mark Healey, the GQ articles editor who wrote the Aniston profile and is in charge of the "Men of the Year" issue. Healey explained that while GQ has featured women inside its year-end issue in the past, this time they decided to "do one woman and do it right." The woman they wanted to do right was Aniston, who would "obviously" go on the cover, Healey said.
"She is the current defining example of Everygirl," said Liz Smith, gossip's reigning queen, who's been around long enough to judge these things. Smith wrote by e-mail that men want Aniston and women want to be her, but that "the women who want to be her are not intimidated. She's very pretty and glamorous in that sun-kissed, worked-out, size-zero L.A. way, but she can easily be just normally attractive -- a girl on the street you might turn to look at. Or not. There's comfort in that. Comfort for men, too. She's not some otherworldly intimidating Amazon or untouchable beauty."
"It was like this perfect storm of factors that created this unbelievable level of interest," said Leslie Bennetts, who wrote the Vanity Fair story that made the September issue the year's bestseller. Bennetts agreed that Aniston's accessibility is part of her appeal. But, she noted, she is also "an incredibly deft comedienne, and that's really important in terms of her popularity." Bennetts also pointed to an entertainment tradition in place since the Depression, when people coped by watching Busby Berkeley musicals. "This has been an incredibly sad and depressing time for America," Bennetts said. "We're at war, a war we increasingly don't believe in. People are scared. Not only was this soap opera a huge distraction, but it was happening to somebody who brought and continues to bring an enormous amount of pleasure into people's lives."
Then there's the familiarity, the false intimacy that 10 years on a television show can proffer. Elle editor Roberta Myers said by e-mail, "For millions and millions of people, [Aniston] was their Thursday night date every week for years on end -- probably more time than a lot of people spent with their actual friends." Myers also noted Aniston's likability. "Of all the ultra-famous female stars out there now, she's one of the few who comports herself with any dignity she doesn't get publicly drunk, smash up her car, curse at her fans, steal other men's husbands."
That's a sentiment echoed by GQ's Healey, who described Aniston almost reverentially as "someone we can get behind. There is honor and respectability and dignity and grace in the way she's handled herself, and you don't see a lot of that anymore. Just compare that to how people 15 or 10 years younger, a generation of Hollywood tramps, handle themselves."
When you combine our penchant for someone who's "just like us" with the ability to feel good about identifying with them, and add to that a fairy-tale victory -- marrying Brad Pitt, becoming a movie star -- you have a recipe for fascination. "[Aniston] was very 'glamoraverage,'" said Joe Dolce, editor of the Star. "She had a universal appeal. And she was the girl who got Brad. No one else got Brad."
GQ's Healey said that spectacular achievement by an essentially unspectacular personality is gratifying in two ways. "She appeals to the optimist in us," he said. "She's one of us but this happened to her." The other, substantially less attractive side of this coin, he continued, is "the Schadenfreude that appeals to our collective mean streak. [After her divorce] she has been knocked down a bit, and that offers us some reassurance that [celebrity] lives suck sometimes too."
All this speaks to the allure of Aniston as celebrity. But there are a lot of congenial celebrities out there -- many of them more beautiful, more famous and better paid than she. Our fascination with her this year has not been accidental; we should not ignore the crucial degree to which she has manipulated the situation she was handed along with her divorce papers.
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