Jennifer Aniston rep blasts magazine for 'shameful' false story about pregnancy

'Shame on InTouch'

Jennifer Aniston (Getty)

Gossip columns have spent 10 years relentlessly speculating and obsessing over Jennifer Aniston’s fertility whilst routinely ignoring every achievement and sign she lives a fulfilled life.

Aniston’s marital status has also been an obsession of tabloids desperate to paint her as miserable and lonely after her divorce from Brad Pitt. While they finally stopped depicting her as doomed to eternal unhappiness after her marriage to Justin Theroux (except in spurious articles about the pair splitting) the pressure on her to procreate was only exacerbated by her nuptials.

The Friends actress is unfathomable to them - how could she not have had children yet?

Then they breathed a collective sigh of relief on Wednesday afternoon. She’s pregnant. Oh, wait. No, she’s not.

Her “miracle” baby was announced by InTouch Weekly and celebrated by fans across the world - until a representative for Aniston told Entertainment Tonight the suggestion she was pregnant was false, adding: “Shame on InTouch.”

The pregnancy story was bolstered simply by Aniston, 47, sitting down on a surfboard while on holiday in the Bahamas with Theroux.

The representative said Aniston had just eaten a “delicious big lunch” and was trying to enjoy herself and feel “safe on private property”.

A decade of cutting comments, conjecture and insinuation have understandably affected Aniston, who talked about the pain it has caused her during an interview with Allure magazine in 2014.

One suggestion she marked as particularly hurtful is that she is selfish for not having children or has somehow “failed” by not producing offspring.

“This continually is said about me: that I was so career-driven and focused on myself; that I don't want to be a mother, and how selfish that is," she said.

“I don't like [the pressure] that people put on me, on women, that you've failed yourself as a female because you haven't procreated.

“I don't think it's fair. You may not have a child come out of your vagina, but that doesn't mean that you aren't mothering - dogs, friends, friends' children.

“Even saying it gets me a little tight in my throat.”