Jennifer Aniston tells Ellen why she wrote essay slamming pregnancy rumours

Jennifer Aniston as slammed tabloids in an appearance on Ellen DeGeneres' talk show.

Jennifer Aniston has opened up to Ellen DeGeneres about the moment she decided to write her now-famous essay slamming persistent tabloid pregnancy rumours.

The 47-year-old told DeGeneres she was feeling "pretty raw" following the death of her mother Nancy Dow and had just returned from a holiday with her husband Justin Theroux.

When they landed, they were swarmed by paparazzi, who believed the Friends star was pregnant after photos of her with "a bump with an arrow pointing to it" were published.

"We were mobbed, a scary kind of mobbed. We didn't know what was happening," she said. "I kept thinking, is Kim Kardashian behind me or something?"

Aniston says it was all too much.

"I was just fed up with it," she said. "And I think these tabloids ... All of us need to take responsibility on what we ingest into our brains.

"Just because we're women: we have a uterus, we have a vagina, we have ovaries. We need to, like, 'Get to work (on having babies), lady!'

"We, as women, do a lot of incredible things in this world other than just procreate - and not that that is not ... We just get boxed in."

The actress then called on viewers to stop buying the "B.S. tabloids".'

"Women, I have to say, are many of the authors of these horrible articles written in these B.S. tabloids so we have to stop listening to them and we have to stop buying them," she said to applause. She finished her thoughts by telling the audience: "It's up to us what makes us happy and fulfilled."

In her essay published earlier this year, Aniston called out the sexism she experiences through tabloid stories.

"The way I am portrayed by the media is simply a reflection of how we see and portray women in general, measured against some warped standard of beauty," she wrote.

Aniston will next be seen in Office Christmas Party, out Thursday.