Jennifer Anniston has always had some sort of connection with popular culture. While not in the direct spotlight herself for more than a decade, Anniston was born to actor John Anniston and actress Nancy Dow. While she did many off Broadway productions and a few short lived TV shows, she did not catch her big break until 1994, cast in the hit series Friends as Rachel Green, lasting 10 years.
While she is best known for her "good girl" supporting roles, she has tried her fair hand at directing and producing and has even been featured in a few music videos such as Tom Petty and The Heartbreaker's song "Walls". She also has a few of her own perfumes and is the spokeswoman for products such as Aveeno skincare, Smart Water and is co-owner of the hair products Living Proof.
While "Queen Bey" may be linked to several different things such as being a talented and successful independent singer, being married to Jay-Z, or from her younger days, being in the group Destiny's Child, something she is not particularly associated with is being an advocate for young women and the poverty rates. During a recent episode on The O'Reilly Factor, Beyonce is portrayed as 21st century's folk devil by Bill O'Reilly. He claims that while she has obtained great popularity, she should be using her positive attention she receives for the greater good instead of performing songs with sexual lyrics and sending the wrong message to the ever impressionable youth of today. To O'Reilly, these lyrics are one of the factors of the "rising" pregnancy rates in young women over the past few years. He also claims she is the epitome of everything that is wrong with society today, thus unjustifiably using her as the scapegoat for today's societal issues that cut deeper than sexually explicit song lyrics, but as usual in popular culture, and history as a whole, we'll continue to focus our attention on something completely irrelevant to the key issue to make us look better.
