Just three letters one for each decade of her superstardom declare the entertainment juggernaut that is Jennifer Lopez.
Danielle Pergament takes the measure of a woman who has made her own legend.
Behind her hangs a four-foot- (five-foot?)
All the things seems like a good explanation for her life.
All the things pretty well sums up the commonwealth known as Jennifer Lopez.
All the things is starting to feel like an understatement.
Since I was little, I was an overachiever, she says.
All you had to do was tell me what to do.
I took direction really well and then I crushed it.
That was my personality.
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Being a lion on the pop culture food chain has been Lopezs defining characteristic since weve known her.
But she is not the same person she was in the 1990s.
None of us are, of course.
The world has changed.
The difference in Lopezs case is that she had a hand in changing it.
(This is her fourthAllurecover.)
It was like, Well, youre not.
How do you feel?
Im like, I feel great about it!
Today, that beauty standard has been excised from our minds like a melanoma.
Was that thanks entirely to Lopez?
After all, the waifs are gone.
Lopez, clearly, is not.
Lopez, who turns 52 this year, performed at last years Super Bowl.
(Remember February 2020?
That was a year ago.)
You could call it theLopez Super Bowl.
By my estimation her audience has always been bigger than ever.
Most people have never heard of me.
The best of Latinos.
It was a moment of age transcendence.
The rules were clear.
White, with signs of affluence?
hey, walk right in and make yourself at home.
Everyone else, take a number and STFU.
But our generation is still dealing with the scars.
Change, meaningful change, was in the air.
Things were looking hopeful.
And then came the pandemic.
What happened to someone like Lopez when the world ground to a halt?
I mean, the first part was like, Wow, this is different, she says.
I think we all were filled with anxiety.
We were in the Twilight Zone, like everybody else.
I started trying to do things together.
We would play base- ball outside or paint together, Lopez says.
We never get to do stuff like that.
I was trying to take advantage of the time.
I miss being creative and running on 150, says Lopez.
But Alex, of all people, was like, I love it.
I love being at home.
I love doing my Zooms.
I love knowing the kids are there, and youre there all the time.
It has been actually really good.
We got to work on ourselves.
I think it was really helpful for us in our relationship.
It was a big deal, she says, unsurprisingly, of the wedding.
We had been planning for months and months and months, and it was overseas.
The way she says overseas makes me picture her walking down the aisle of Buckingham Palace.
Or at least, like, Hogwarts.
Maybe that wasnt the right time, she says.
You start thinking of all of these things how everything has its kind of perfect, divine moment.
This is said with a fervor I believe.
I do sit on the couch and eat potato chips!
The thing is not to get too used to it, because its so easy and so fun.
When it came to the Oscars [snub], it was a sting.
[But] I dont do this to have 10 Oscars sitting on my mantel or 20 Grammys.
Take her life the year before the pandemic, for example: I started training forHustlersin January 2019.
I went from training forHustlersto doingHustlersto going on a tour to doing awards season while filmingMarry Me.
Then training for Super Bowl rehearsals.
And then it was the Super Bowl.
To someone who has been performing her whole life, an adoring public is sustenance.
Stages are where I feel the most comfortable, she says.
I dont like talking or doing speeches, but to sing and dance or to act?
Come here, baby.
Thats what I do.
I ask her something Ive always wanted to: She crushedHustlers, in a thong, at age 50.
Why push herself like that?
Where does that drive come from and whats the end goal?
If you work hard, it’s possible for you to accomplish something, she says.
you’re able to win the medal.
But you won the medal, I say.
She won all the medals!
There are no medals left.
Trophy stores have to go to her!
Okay, fine, so there is that one medal she was very much not nominated for last year.
I was talking about this the other day.
And when it came to the Oscars, it was so obviously absent.
It was a sting.
Is it really real?
Are the other ones real and this one isnt?
It came to a point where I was like, This is not why I do this.
I dont do this to have 10 Oscars sitting on my mantel or 20 Grammys.
Makeup color: Juicy Tubes in Marshmallow Electro by Lancome.
Photographer: Daniella Midenge.
Stylist: Nicola Formichetti.
Hair: Chris Appleton.
Makeup: Mary Phillips.
Set Design: Evan Jourden.
Nails: Tom Bachik.
Who among us doesnt know this ego-id, death-cage match?
One side is saying, Its about the work, its about the work, its about the work.
The elixir of glory and awards is powerful; its also fleeting.
So we keep filling it.
And on we go.
I think my life is about more than awards.
You have a lot of people that feel that way about you.
It was his way of saying that I should do something.
He probably heard me complaining about what was happening in the world.
Like so many other things in life, protesting is different if youre J.Lo.
Im not used to being in big crowds like that Im always on the stage.
[My life is] car to back door to security to this to that.
I got a little anxiety, like, How do you get out of the crowd?
Once I got [into it], to be in the masses like that, I loved it.
Like, Wow, theres a movement happening.
So many people, different ages, races it was a beautiful thing.
When tragedy came to the foreground over and over again, so did our humanity.
The Earth stopped vibrating with traffic and the air cleared.
We cant just keep living our lives and thinking everythings going to work itself out, Lopez says.
No, its not going to work out.
We have to get involved.
We have to make changes.
That was why 2020, as difficult and scary as it was, was so necessary.
What we realized is that were all in this together.
In the middle of the pandemic, Lopez recalls, [my daughter] Emme came to me crying.
She was like, Why is all this happening?
It was such an emotional thing because I was trying to comfort her and myself in the same moment.
We just have to hang on.
