Mythmakers

On Jennifer Lopez, celebrity narratives and creating the self

Every year like clockwork, the same JLo interview goes viral. I have a very long memory and have been on the internet for twenty years, so every year, I begrudgingly watch everyone feign shock at JLo’s candor. 

In the interview, she attacks Salma Hayek, Cameron Diaz, Winona Ryder, Madonna, and Gwyneth Paltrow, all contemporaries and icons. While I applaud Lopez for her ability to get down and dirty (especially in an age where no one makes equivocal statements anymore and everything is watered down fizz), there’s a part of the 1998 interview that no one talks about. Lopez turns to the interviewer and acknowledges that she’s obsessed with love. It motivates her, drives her, animates her. Lopez was frank in a way that celebrities very often aren’t about their psychological darkness.

Recently, divorce rumors have been swirling around Ben and Jen, and when I saw the news, I admit my heart broke a little. I can’t really explain why I love her so much: I’m well aware of her personal reputation for being exceedingly unkind to waitstaff, but I also deeply admire her work ethic. In an interview, she stated that she looks the way she does because she doesn’t drink, works out six days a week, and avoids sugar. She stars in medium-bad movies regularly and shows up to everything. She’s also from the Bronx, like me, and it tickles me that a woman regularly derided for being untalented is so, so successful in such an unforgiving industry. 

In a way, I admire her. Lopez’s ability to rebrand herself as a hopeless romantic is alchemical, it’s magical. When we talk about our friends who hop from relationship to relationship, there’s always an element of confusion, a slight eyebrow raise. Can you believe she has another boyfriend? But with JLo, it’s romantic. 

Jennifer Lopez in 1999, 2005, 2016, and 2024

It’s almost anti-millennial: I’ve talked about how millennials are obsessed with productivizing and processing and fixing every issue in their lives to have the most optimal experience. We have celebrities talking about their trauma in music, interviews, and sponsored Instagram posts. It’s somewhat refreshing that Lopez told us she would never be happy without a man 26 years ago. She’s self-aware!

I have a bit of a harsher read (asking for forgiveness in advance): I think JLo is stuck in a defensive crouch. When Matt Rife went on an unhinged rant about being more than a crowd work comedian (at the end of his Netflix special), I clocked that there’s often a defensiveness that comes from the tension between one’s ability and their public perception. Lopez knows what people think of her. Her movies are fine, her music is fine. She’s no Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock (Movie Stars in the traditional sense, with their own gravitational forces and audience appeal built in) but she’s known. I think her intense disappointment at not being nominated for an Oscar for Hustlers is activating her defensiveness. She’s performing for us: I’m good, right? Do you see me? Am I good enough yet? It’s her fatal flaw.

In her (maligned) musical film This is Me… Now: A Love Story, Lopez attends a SLAA meeting to work out the root of her issues and determines what she needs is… self love. (Self-aware and chronically online!) Now, I’m not a therapist, but I did raise my eyebrow a little at this. It feels… trite. We live in the self-love era. Oprah has been telling us to love ourselves for decades. Dove skincare and chocolate brands and soaps and perfumes and progressive movements are all telling us that we simply don’t love ourselves enough. I don’t think the conclusion is wrong, but I think the question might be. 

Despite Hollywood’s glamour, there’s a sadness at the heart of the enterprise. Actors regularly talk about how their need for validation is all consuming. How many celebrities have we seen led astray by the promise of more love, more attention, more clicks, more likes, more hearts? I’m curious to see what Lopez will do if the rumors are true and they do get divorced. At the end of her movie, she’s healed… but she still gets her man (it was billed as a love story, after all). Lopez has flayed herself for our amusement¹ for thirty years now, trapped in a never ending cycle of meet-cutes and weddings. 

In a way, Lopez is asking us to choose our own adventure: is it romantic that she’s spent her life searching for a love that seems to elude her? Or is it sad? (It feels almost cruel to mention that she released an album named Love? in 2011 and a book named True Love in 2014.) Celebrities regularly rebrand their neuroses (make me the bad guy Chun-Li, who’s afraid of little old me? break up with your girlfriend, etc) but ultimately, it’s up to the audience to decide if they’re buying it or not. I truly, truly want the best for Lopez: I famously cried when she got engaged to Alex Rodriguez².

Earlier, I said the behavior was anti-millennial, but the more I think about it, the more I think JLo’s behavior is actually very 2024. She told us what her problem is, she’s self-aware, and she’s doing nothing to change it. The thesis of the film was hidden in plain sight: this is her, now, then, and always. 

1. One of my old roommates was a therapist, and when I was in my “dating stand-up comedians” era, she looked at me and said: “I find it so interesting that you choose to date men who flay themselves on stage in order to process their emotions.” I never went on a date with a comedian again.

2. I’m from the Bronx! There is nothing that makes more sense to me than a marriage between a Dominican and a Puerto Rican.