Brad Stuns Jen Marry Me Again
When Us Met Jen
The history of the tabloid creation Sad Jennifer Aniston.
The following is an excerpt from the latest episode of Slate's podcast Decoder Ring .
Listen to the full episode using the sound player beneath, or via Apple Podcasts , Overcast , Spotify , Stitcher , or Google Play .
In May of 2002, 2 of the stars of Friends, Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox, appeared on the cover of Us Weekly. The headline said, "Will They Always Accept Babies?"
Usa Weekly had recently made itself over from a monthly magazine into a weekly one, a magazine that was devoted to celebrities just that didn't admire them. Us was funny and trashy and impertinent. Information technology had the indicate of view of your curious, shameless celebrity-obsessed friend. It didn't just evidence famous people as they wanted to be seen, in photo shoots or primped and ready on a red rug—it showed them pumping gas in Uggs and no makeup. And it became a 18-carat cultural and publishing phenomenon, considering it was dissimilar anything else on the market.
At the time, glory journalism was dominated past People mag. People had been founded in 1974, a new kind of magazine devoted to "personality journalism," to sharing with readers what relevant public figures—celebrities, politicians, athletes, special interest subjects—were actually similar. An early upshot had a human being on the encompass in a swimming pool, a man the mag referred to as "Jerry": It was President Gerald Ford. People was a Time Inc. mag, and information technology worked difficult to maintain the company's reputation for veracity. When information technology ran a story, information technology usually had its subject'south cooperation: They sat for an interview; they posed for a photograph.
People was a huge success, selling nearly i million copies of its very first issue. Merely past the late '90s, the kind of celebrity coverage it was offer—respectful, authorized, access-oriented—was no longer new. Jann Wenner, the co-founder of Rolling Stone and the owner of United states of america magazine, saw an opening in the marketplace. He wanted to plough Usa, a monthly that had existed since 1977—and was originally created as a People magazine copycat—into a weekly that would compete straight with People by channeling the spirit of European celebrity weeklies such equally Hullo! This new magazine would focus on newsstand sales, which depend on catchy, salacious covers and brand way more than money for magazines than subscribers, who pay a deeply discounted rate.
So in March 2000, Us magazine became United states of america Weekly. Merely information technology didn't really detect itself until early 2002, when Wenner hired the editor Bonnie Fuller, who had already had success at magazines like Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and Marie Claire. Fuller'due south Us was mostly photographs, lightly dappled with text. Y'all didn't read U.s.a. Weekly so much as wait at it. It was printed on sleeky newspaper that made information technology appear classier, less cheap than other tabloids at the time, and more like an upscale, "real" magazine. It'due south hyperbolic covers often promised gossip the corresponding article didn't evangelize. The "Will They Ever Have Babies?" embrace, for example, was teasing a pretty thoughtful reported slice on the stigma significant actresses face while trying to keep working, non anything concrete about Aniston's plans to have kids.
United states' nearly well-known photograph spread was "Stars—They're Just Like Us," in which famous people were shown doing extremely regular things: going to Starbucks, staring off into space, feeding the meter. It was the perfect example of United states of america Weekly'due south originality, of the magazine'due south intuitive understanding of its readers' deliciously clashing relationship to glory, to the way that you tin dearest some celebrities and hate others, and want to run into them both on the red carpet and with bed head.
Since the start of US Weekly, so much near the mag industry and the logistics of celebrity has inverse. Us took off before Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat and YouTube and the Kardashians. Information technology took off before mag sales cratered. The big couples from that time now audio like barely comprehensible early-aughts give-and-take salad: Jared Leto and Cameron Diaz, Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake, Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears, Britney Spears and that guy she married for 55 hours. But there'south one matter that's stayed the same: the fascination with whether Jennifer Aniston is having a baby.
A couple of months of ago, I was at the dentist's part and I saw a copy of the tabloid InTouch. On the cover, at that place was a moving-picture show of Jennifer Aniston and her ex-husband, Brad Pitt. The headline said "Brad and Jen: Wedding ceremony and a Baby!" There have been more. Likewise in 2018, InTouch ran an result with the cover line "Brad Stuns Jen! Marry Me Again!" and another near Brad and Jen's Italian honeymoon. OK! had a cover that said "Yep, I'm Meaning—With Brad's Baby!" And Star published an issue in Nov that said, "Brad and Jen: See Our Baby!"
What is going on? How is it still going on? Why is it nonetheless going on?
So today on Decoder Ring, an honest to God mystery: Is Jennifer Aniston having Brad Pitt's baby?
For the answer to this question, listen to Decoder Band's "Sad Jennifer Aniston."
Source: https://slate.com/culture/2018/12/jennifer-aniston-us-weekly-sad-jen-decoder-ring-transcript.html
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