At its nicest end, the media has always treated Aniston with a sense of pally familiarity, bordering on proprietorship.

Ever since Rachel Green won us over in the 90s, she's been an ally, the girl-next-door with great hair whom we love to treat with a sense of affection and protectiveness - an attitude the actress has never in any way solicited.

This fuzzy feeling took on a more disturbing edge when Aniston and Pitt divorced in 2005, amid frenzied rumours of his affair with Angelina Jolie on-set Mr and Mrs Smith.

Suddenly, “Jen” became cast in a victim role - the loser in Hollywood's most famous love triangle - prompting a maelstrom of metaphorical tea and sympathy, as well deliriously inaccurate speculation over her “heartbroken” status.

“Why can’t she keep hold of her man?” blares one headline from 2010.

“The top seven reasons no man will love Jennifer Aniston,” reads another astonishing 2009 post.

“Is Jen unlucky in love again?” is the breathless question posited by this pseudo-emphatic article.

At least she's pretty - but wait, no: “Jennifer Aniston's unhappy with her looks”. Things have really got bad for her...

A funny, talented and assured woman became reduced to the hysteria of her own press coverage, on a level unprecedented to any other Hollywood star.

Most people would find it pretty galling. Maybe they would even start playing into the stereotype, such is its sticking power.

But Aniston's answer has been genius. She simply rides above the storm and does and says exactly as she likes - proving time and again that she is not the “poor Jen” caricature we've lumbered her with.

In fact the uncontrollable tabloid frenzy is something she's proven herself happy to step back and laugh about; surely not the actions of a distraught, lovelorn waif.

Jennifer Aniston is a woman who lives life to her own rules, so let's stop patronising her