Grantland takes a look at the media coverage that surrounds Jennifer Aniston and her response to it.

Jennifer Aniston gets a kind of public mockery and extreme level of hatred that other less talented, more beautiful actresses don’t get. Aniston gets the loud public hatred of people who care inappropriately much about the superficial beauty of talented-at-their-craft actresses and the echoed hatred of women who hate themselves because of how impossible standards of beauty are. Even those who do seem to achieve them eventually age out.

The actresses who seem beautiful into old age are the ones like Helen Mirren who don’t cling to their vanity too ridiculously much, who don’t attempt to chase their younger selves with needles forever until they become unrecognizable. They continue to seem beautiful; we fell in love with their personalities to begin with, and personalities reside in their faces. We love specific actors because they look specific.

Aniston is a punching bag for single women, for cuckolded divorcées, for anyone who’s ever had the rug pulled out from under them and then been told they should never have bought that rug to begin with because they can’t afford it. And then also the sympathetic heroine of those same women, who work for themselves and actually can afford the rug. But all of that is exactly what makes Aniston such a great comedienne. Comedians are punching bags.