Exploring the Language of the Stars

Behind the Scenes: Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Breast Insurance Policy

Behind the Scenes: Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Breast Insurance Policy
Kevin Dooley

Jennifer Love Hewitt wants to ensure her best assets are protected.

While promoting the second season of Lifetime’s The Client List, the 34-year-old actress admitted to USA Today that she would consider getting her breasts insured. “I need, like, an insurance invitation. If somebody was like, ‘Hey, you know what? We would like to insure your boobs for $2.5 million dollars,’ I’d be like, ‘Do it. Love it! Why not?’” laughed Hewitt, who wears a size 36C bra. She then pointed to her chest and joked, “These things right here are worth $5 million!”

Cynthia Pekoria (manager, State Farm Insurance, Sherman Oaks branch): OK which one of you dick-fucks approved this.

Dalton Leonard (customer service representative): If this is about Kanye’s cat getting renter’s insurance, I can actually explain that.

Pekoria: It’s not about Kanye’s cat.

Leonard: Good, because I mean it actually makes sense if you think about it. New baby coming, a lot could happen.

Pekoria: Shut up about cats. I’m asking which one of you former porn stars has had their brain so ravaged by syphilis that you let Jennifer Love Hewitt walk out of here with a $5 million insurance policy on her boobs.

George Wilson (senior agent): I don’t know about let her. Technically this is a free country and people can insure whatever they wish? We should praise the, the what, the gods of industry who have granted us the opportunity to perform arbitrage on anything, from a mansion on a hill to a young woman’s secondary sex characteristics.

Jeannie Glass (intern): Hey, if we’re seriously going to spend this entire meeting talking about boobs I’m super out of here. This internship is unpaid and I can manage your social media strategy—please note these cool air quotes I’m doing—from home.

Pekoria: Shut up. The boobs are not the issue.

Wilson: They’re not?

Pekoria: They’re not. We could be talking about her butt or her smile or her elbow or even other parts that shall remain suspiciously nameless.

Barbie Maldives (actuary, Level II): When you reduce a woman to a series of individual parts like that I feel like I’m looking at a college girl’s Tumblr. [Stares at Glass]

Leonard: Where did this $5 million figure even come from? How is any body part worth five mil? Besides your smile, Cynthia.

Pekoria: Eat shit, Leonard.

Maldives: I feel like, by placing a monetary value—a not-insignificant value, might I add—on a woman’s breasts, are we not ascribing value to all breasts in general, and by proxy, the women they belong to? We’ve basically moved society forward by, like, 10 years at least.

Glass: See, her saying that this insurance policy proves woman have value? That’s a tweet right there. This is what I’ve been trying to explain.

Pekoria: Corporate is going to have a goddamned field day with this one. They’re still angry with us for insuring Robert Downey Jr.’s goatee.

Leonard: But it’s so essential to who he is!

Pekoria: He shaved it off before he even left the office! Quickest $2 million we ever lost.

Leonard: I just ... I couldn’t imagine him without it.

Maldives: I keep his beard trimmings in a little vial. I wear it around my neck. Look.

Wilson: Excuse me but are Cynthia and I the only ones wondering what we’re even insuring against? What could possibly happen to Jennifer Love Hewitt’s boobs?

Leonard: A lot could happen to her boobs. Probably a lot has.

Maldives: Yeah, read the literature, pal. Eat a yogurt.

Glass: I am definitely going to throw up if this conversation continues much longer. And I recognize that as the social media intern it’ll be my job to clean it up. I’ll use it as content for our anemic Instagram.

Pekoria: My point is, we are being used as a marketing tool. My father started this agency back in 1989 with nothing but a mullet and a dream. A dream that he could provide a needed service to the Hollywood community, offering protection for their valuables and treating them as real people, with real needs. Not celebrities with a pair of boobs and a wallet.

Leonard: What is she saying? I’m thinking about mullets.

Glass: She’s saying that by letting Jennifer Love Hewitt take out this policy, we’re allowing her to objectify herself. We’re enabling her assessment that her career is fueled by people who are interested in her breasts first and her as a human being second.

Wilson: Is that even true?

Leonard: I think she has a nice ass. Just going to put that out there. If we’re putting her body parts in order.

Glass: You’re saying we need to help Jennifer Love Hewitt see past her own media hype. We can’t allow her to objectify herself in this way, and we certainly can’t be party to it.

Pekoria: I am.

Glass: So we sell her a policy that insures her acting ability.

Wilson: Whoa. That’s.

Pekoria: OK, intern, change seats with George. You’re our new VP of Everything.

Dalton: Can we even do that? This isn’t like the time we insured Bruce Willis’s bald head.

Maldives: UGH his beautiful head!

Leonard: I know, right? I just want to rub my whole body on it, like he’s a man-sized deodorant.

Dalton: But how do we calculate and assess her acting ability? Is that a quantifiable thing? And even if we get her to buy the policy, will it cause other actresses to reassess their self-image? Can one local branch of an insurance conglomerate really effect social change on such a grand scale?

Pekoria: The new intern can MySpace up a solution. In the meantime we need to break. Aren’t we insuring Macklemore’s penis in an hour?

Wilson: YES.

Dalton: I’ve heard it’s quite big.

Pekoria: I have also heard it is quite big.

Maldives: I’ll bring my calculator.

Pekoria: Bring two calculators. Just in case.