dear jennifer aniston,

I realize I don't know you at all (although I feel like I could give you some career advice, since you seem to make questionable choices in movie roles - I suspect you're probably better than "main girlfriend" all the time, but maybe that's all Hollywood offers).  And our lives are probably not on the same trajectory.  I mean, yours is all "glamorous, beautiful, world-traveling movie star" and mine is more, "milk-stained t-shirt at the local grocery store," but I saw that you're, once again, on the cover of People magazine this week and, on behalf of women-who-stayed-single-for-longer-than-most-and-maybe-still-are, I just want to say this to you:

don't let the asshats get you down.

I mean, really.  A week hardly goes by without some tabloid proclaiming that you are desperately attaching yourself to yet another guy, or seeking an international adoption to cure your clearly raging loneliness (aren't all single people horribly lonely, after all?), or barely keeping yourself from leaping off a bridge at the sight of Brangelina and its Ever Increasing Brood.  And then there's the latest People cover, which shouts, "Jennifer swears, I'm happy, really!" as if you had a giant nail stuck through your chest and kept insisting, "it doesn't hurt, really!"

Is it that hard to believe that a single woman could be happy?  I mean, I never remember seeing these sorts of covers with Warren Beatty ("Warren swears, I'm happy, really!") or George Clooney ("George breaks up again, desperate for love") or any of the other famous Hollywood bachelors.  Nobody goes around thinking that a 40-year old male movie star is drowning himself in vodka tonics every night just because he hasn't managed to get hitched yet.

It seems to me like pulling off a successful movie career (minus that one with what's his face) is a lot harder than getting married.  A lot of people are married.  Not a lot of people are movie stars.  Maybe it's just that you don't fit into the "what a woman is supposed to do with her life" mold that most people expect.  I had that problem when I was single.  It seemed like everyone and their brother kept asking when I was going to get married, as if I could just produce The Ideal Spouse out of thin air.  Then you get married, and everyone wants to know when you're going to have children.

Which maybe is why I feel so irritated on your behalf.  Because it turns out that I couldn't produce kids out of thin air (not to mention my uterus) either, and the constant assumption that I wouldn't be happy without them was hard to bear.  It's one thing to feel that for yourself; it's all the other people piling it on top of you that starts to hurt.  "Don't you want children?" they say, as if there could be no hurt at all hiding behind my childlessness.  "You'd be such a good mom," they say, which only makes you want to weep in front of them because you know that, damn it, which is why you cried when you got your period for the 37th time in a row this morning.

So, anyway.  I realize you'll never read this.  But I hope you don't read People either.  Because you seem like a nice person.  And if you want to get married, I hope you do.  But I bet you're pretty happy as you are.  I hope so.  I hope we can all find happiness in the life we have, instead of wishing it away for the one we don't.

You know what America?  She looks pretty happy to me.  SO SHUT IT ALREADY.

Carry on, Jennifer.

Sincerely,
babyinterrupted