Not a "Sad Jen" in sight. The women re-writing the rules of celebrity divorce.

“I want total happiness.” 

Kim Kardashian is talking about why she decided to divorce Kanye West. 

“Obviously, I know complete bliss is not a full reality but if I can have it more the majority of the time, that's all I want to do.”

Kim wanted to be more happy, more of the time. A woman worth a staggering $1.2billion, with all the privilege that beauty and status can bring, knows that if you are in a partnership that is broken, it will leach into the rest of your life and poison it at the roots. 

Women suffer the most in dysfunctional relationships. 

It’s women, overwhelmingly, who are the caretakers of a household, the emotional barometer and the logistics managers. 

It’s women who will, again, overwhelmingly, suffer the most if their partner is struggling with anger, insecurity, jealousy or poor mental health. 

It’s women, overwhelmingly, who will end up caring for broken men. 

It’s women, overwhelmingly, who will take the lion’s share of the responsibility for children if there are children to be taken responsibility for, and it is also women who have the most to lose, financially, if their marriages don’t survive all of these pressures. 

Kim Kardashian is not a relevant role model for the woman trapped in a relationship that isn't adding any happiness to her life, but she - and a handful of other, high-profile female celebrities - are rewriting the rules of what it looks like to get out of one. 

And that - just like the shape of women’s bottoms and the contour of their cheekbones and the colour of their fingernails and Insta-filtered everything - will eventually make its way into the broader culture, and begin to colour how we feel about Women Who Leave. 

Because what celebrities do in their private lives, if they are prepared to be decidedly un-private about it, eventually reaches the rest of us. 

Case in point: Gwyneth Paltrow and the great "Conscious Uncoupling" of 2014. Almost a decade later, civilised, familial break-ups have never been hotter. 

And in pop-culture terms, in 2021 we have had a year of sexy divorce.

There was Kim. Her sister Kourtney, who might have split from her long-term partner a while back, but this year really dialled up the sexy-single schtick. There’s Megan Fox. There’s JLo (who, to be fair, has been rebranding divorce since the 1990s). And writing the soundtrack and bringing bagfuls of heart is Adele. 

Not one of these women conform to the stereotype of the celebrity divorcee that we were all familiar with from just a decade or so ago. 

Consider, if you will, Sad Jen.

Jennifer Aniston, fancy white lady icon for three decades now, has never been permitted to escape the shame of being left. 

It has been 16 years since she and Brad Pitt ended their five-year marriage, and four years since she split from her second husband, Justin Theroux, and yet it was only last week that she had to address - again - the eternal pity-party that's been thrown on her behalf ever since.

“I was the girl next door, the damsel in distress, the brokenhearted — your traditional rom-com themes," she told the Hollywood Reporter. 

"Men can be married as many times as they want to, they can marry [younger] women in their 20s or 30s. Women aren’t allowed to do that.” 

Jennifer Aniston has an extraordinary life. 

More money and resources than most of us can imagine. She is healthy, beautiful, has several houses so stylishly fabulous they feature in Architectural Digest. 

She has green-light power in her career, is as busy as she wants to be, and by every account from anyone who is in her orbit, is exceptionally good at friendship, surrounded by a circle of tight mates who support and celebrate her. 

She gets to travel wherever she’d like, assist any good cause she chooses. Her life, from where most of us sit, most days, looks like a life we would all love. A life, which, if it belonged to a man, we would admire and celebrate. 

But she is 52, without children, and, crucially, she has been unchosen. Twice. Poor Jen. Sad Jen. How could she possibly be happy?

This is divorce as looked at through the eyes of Generation X. 

The first generation, it should be noted, to grow up with divorced parents in significant number. A generation whose view of divorce has been informed, entirely reasonably, through a lens of trauma and stigma. 

They are also the generation who did not grow up with the hyper-surveillance and content-thirst trap of social media. 

Not so for the kids who grew up with the Kardashians in their lives, and Likes front of mind. 

In pop culture terms, weddings have never been hotter. The ultimate social-media event, a wedding can take care of your engagement (the social media kind, as well as the betrothal kind) for the best part of two years, from the ring announcement, to the dress shopping to the hens' weekend to the big day and the justifiable cycle reposts - One week since! Three months since! Can you believe it’s been a year! - and is still, after decades of feminism, immovable as a marker of achievement and success. 

It’s official: We are chosen. 

The kind of image-crafting and story-spinning that was once only the domain of movie stars and their beleaguered publicists is now how many of us view our lives. 

And if diamonds and tulle are great for main-character energy, so is a post-split relaunch. 

Because freeing yourself from the restraints of a difficult, limiting, disappointing, perhaps even abusive, relationship, is the ultimate act of self-care. 

That’s what Adele has allowed so many women to say out loud this year. She exists in a separate but adjacent universe to the Kardashians. 

Hidden from view for the most part, emerging only to share her unimaginably popular art when she needs us, and, as it turns out, we need her. 30 is about “divorce, babe”, and it’s about grappling with the complexity of a decision that changes the course of your child’s life, but was impossible not to make.

"I was just going through the motions and I wasn’t happy," Adele told Vogue. "Neither of us did anything wrong. Neither of us hurt each other or anything like that. It was just: I want my son to see me really love, and be loved. It’s really important to me,"

And those women have a bible, as well as a soundtrack. Get Divorced, Be Happy, is a book by Helen Thorn. She is an Australian comedian who’s big in the UK, thanks to the very popular podcast she makes with her friend Ellie Gibson, Scummy Mummies.

Eighteen months ago, Helen’s 20-year relationship blew up overnight. 

She wrote a book about it, but it’s not a heartbreak book, it’s a cry of freedom. For her brain and soul and also, perhaps crucially, in all this visual representation of relaunch, for her body. 

Helen told The Single Supplement, “There were moments when I was recovering from the separation, when I suddenly realised I was free to do anything I wanted with it. 

"Absolutely anything. And that me and my body were free from comments, judgement or disapproval, and free to be whatever version of me I cared to be. I could pierce it, pluck it, sculpt it and learn to love it, even get a big tattoo of Dawn French on my arse if I wanted to. It was an exciting feeling to be so in control.”

Every piece of this narrative is a shift towards something women have never been allowed to be: Free. 

Free to be coupled, free to be single. Free to be solo-parents, co-parents, not parents at all. Free to love sex without love and love without sex. Free to make their own money and build their own worlds and to tell everyone - this is who I am, this is who I want. 

Free to not spend life care-taking without gratitude. Free to move my own needs further up the endless to-do list. Free not to be defined by my relationship to you.  

Free to be, you know, more like men. 

Feature Image: Canva