Aniston, GQ In A First

(CBS)  GQ magazine is marking its tenth Man of the Year issue with its first cover devoted to a woman.

Jennifer Aniston gets the honor.

There are two other cover subjects this year: actor Vince Vaughn and rapper 50 Cent.

The GQ editor who wrote the story on Aniston, Mark Healy, says other women have been featured in Man of the Year issues before, but none has ever graced a cover.

Healy

tells

The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith the criteria for picking people are fairly straightforward: "Primarily, someone we believe in, someone who's had an impact that year, and someone who reflects the year in culture."

Healy calls Vaughn "a great comedic actor and he certainly provided our readers with more laughs this year and a better time at the movies than they would have had ordinarily. He's been doing it for five years.

"50 Cent had a great year. He started out with a big record and finished with an ambitious, sort of revealing movie."

Healy assured Smith it was just a coincidence that Aniston was chosen in the same year Vaughn was. They're reportedly romantically linked, after the collapse of Aniston's marriage to Brad Pitt.

"We decided to put them on the cover a long time before any of this was at all credible, if in fact it is," Healy says. "I mean, we started talking about Vince in April, when we first started seeing screenings of 'The Wedding Crashers.' And once more of us saw it, we all decided that was it."

Healy interviewed Aniston at her Malibu beach house in August and says it "was comfortable. It was plush and certainly a good place to spend time. She's good company, as you know, and made me feel very welcome. And it was a beautiful Malibu afternoon and we just hung out."

As for sexy pictures of Aniston in GQ, Healy says, "She's fairly comfortable with how she looks and how she's feeling, and she chose to express it."

Why was she picked?

"In the glare of this public breakup, she's been dignified and graceful and respectful of the five years of marriage that she did have. … A lot of Hollywood marriages these days last five weeks. And here is someone who respected that enough to be quiet and honor it."

Healy's article describes a comment Gwyneth Paltrow made in the press about Aniston and Pitt.

Healy tells Smith: "(Paltrow) said perhaps Brad and Jen, when things were going well, were a little too open to the press, were a little too welcoming of the world to share their good thing. And that, in the end, came back to haunt them. When I brought that up with her, she agreed."