Don’t pity Jennifer Aniston. She’s doing just fine

For no good reason at all, I have felt pity for Jennifer Aniston because she is approaching 50 and isn’t yet a mother. But maybe she’s onto something.

Jennifer Aniston doesn’t need your pity. (Pic: AFP/Mark Ralston)

Jennifer Aniston was reported this week to be adopting her first child at 47. Her rep called the story “wrong” but if it’s so wrong why does it seem so right, ingenious even when you break down the financial and personal benefits, to delay motherhood until you’re approaching retirement?

I, like many over the years, have looked upon childless Aniston’s yoga obsession with pity. For no good reason at all, I have felt pity for Jennifer freaking Aniston, who is so clearly my better in every way imaginable, just because she is approaching 50 and isn’t yet a mother.

So when I first saw articles about Aniston allegedly planning on adopting a baby from Mexico, I sat down and did the sums expecting to commiserate with her.

Instead I discovered perhaps the most well-planned celebrity path to retirement since Malcolm in the Middle star Frankie Muniz got into a Twitter fight and quit the business as a teenager with $40 million he earned as a child actor, a retirement plan even better than Oscar winner Marlon Brando’s move to a private island where he indulged himself into obesity while chitchatting on ham radio to strangers on boats.

I make clear I have no financial or medical expertise. What I do have is Jennifer Aniston expertise. I have seen most of her movies, even 1993 horror Leprechaun. Even scarier than that, was the “Rachel” haircut I requested at a salon in my early teens.

I’ll lay out the numbers for you and you make up your own mind about the Jennifer Aniston Retirement plan as inspired by this week’s tabloid adoption story.

First, by delaying motherhood until 47, Aniston has gained two decades of professional and romantic freedom beyond the oft-quoted child-bearing age of 27 when fertility is said to decrease.

In those 20 childless years, Aniston capitalised on her most profitable years as an actor and appeared in more than one movie a year on average. She was able to continue starring as the aforementioned “Rachel” on the wildly popular TV sitcom Friends for which she won an Emmy and a Golden Globe and helped her accumulate her current $150 million.

Romantically, in those 20 childless years, Aniston’s credits are just as impressive. If she settles down with current love Justin Theroux now to start a family at age 47, she does so after reportedly having sex with Gerard Butler, John Mayer, Vince Vaughn, Brad Pitt, Paul Rudd and Jon Stewart.

Now there are biological considerations. It might be too late for Aniston physically to conceive and carry her own child even when taking into to account her famous yoga obsession.

She can adopt though. And if she does now, the child will have reached adulthood by the time mother reaches the US retirement age. That could leave Aniston at 66 with no dependants.

Aniston’s only burdens retiring at that point will be $150 million; an Emmy and a Golden Globe; a haircut, albeit hideous, named after one of her characters; Theroux and an adult child they raised together; enough time before she reaches the US life expectancy for women to live to see a grandchild, and if she hangs in there a few years longer maybe a great-grandchild; and 20 years of memories of having sex with Butler, Pitt and Stewart among others. Pity Aniston?

It’s only a pity it took a media story about her adopting from a Mexican orphanage to illustrate there may be nothing “wrong’’ with delaying a family if you’re Jennifer Aniston and you plan it the right way.

------------------------------

People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive announcement causes controversy every year and, perhaps, my following objection will only add needless scandal to the recent naming of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson as the current titleholder.

But here it is. The magazine should get rid of the word “alive” because it’s redundant.

Fans complained in the past that there were sexier men, such as Ryan Gosling or Chris Pratt, more deserving of the title than winners Adam Levine and Channing Tatum. It happens every time.

Every time, however, none of the sexier men floated by fans as more deserving winners have been dead at the time of the announcement. No one has yet argued that a currently decomposing corpse is sexier than any previous Sexiest Men titleholders. Fan’s have reached a consensus on that point, People magazine, alive is sexier than dead, so we can just move on from that point.

------------------------------

Carrie Fisher reveals in her new memoir, Princess Diarist, she got laid by Harrison Ford on the set of Star Wars 40 years ago.

You’d rightly be appalled by this, and I am too.

I mean, it’s disgusting to not call the book Princess Layer if it’s about sex.