While some celebrity ladies are tormented by the tabloids about being, sad, lonely, or, better yet, “pregnant and alone,” Cameron Diaz manages to grin her way through being unmarried and childless without being painted as tragic. And in the new issue of Esquire, she reveals that her attitude towards not having kids is actually very simple.
The author of Esquire‘s piece, David Curcurito* Tom Chiarella, says to Diaz, after hanging out with her for a while, “You really just have it wired now, don’t you? I mean you are on top of things, aren’t you?” And the actress’s mindset sounds healthy and awesome:
I like being forty-one. I love it. So much shit just falls away. Fear, mostly. It’s the best age. That’s when a woman knows how to work things, or she doesn’t care about that anymore. You just stop being afraid. You don’t worry about what men think. You just don’t worry that time registers anything awful.
But then, Chiarella says, “But you’re rich… You…” and he trails off. He writes:
I would say I stammered here, caught between saying “You are beautiful” and “You don’t have children,” thinking, I guess, that those facts probably had something to do with life being easy. And since I hate stating the obvious — even though it must be said: She is beautiful — I went with “You don’t have any children.” And I thought there’d be a reverent silence then, since most Americans seem to consider having children to be the holiest of holy creeds, the sacred mission of all women, the thing that many assume compels us all to happiness. But Diaz jumps on that.
She certainly does. She lays it out for him:
It’s so much more work to have children. To have lives besides your own that you are responsible for — I didn’t take that on. That did make things easier for me. A baby — that’s all day, every day for eighteen years. Not having a baby might really make things easier, but that doesn’t make it an easy decision. I like protecting people, but I was never drawn to being a mother. I have it much easier than any of them. That’s just what it is. Doesn’t mean life isn’t sometimes hard. I’m just what I am. I work on what I am. Right now, I think, things are good for me. I’ve done a lot. And I don’t care anymore.
Perfectly normal, sane reasoning. Great, in fact. (Do men’s mags pester almost-forty-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio about being childless? Okay, okay maybe, sorta.) But still: bless her. Bless her for thoughtfully negating the all-women-want-babies narrative, without judgment or sanctimoniousness or anything other than Real Talk.
Also: Go out for drinks with us, Cammie D. Please.
*The story was written by Tom Chiarella, not David Curcurito; I regret the error.