Jennifer Lopez expressed disbelief after reading The New York Times op-ed, which expressed dissatisfaction that the singer acquired Ben Affleck’s surname after the two married in a Las Vegas wedding in July.
The singer, 53, confessed that adopting the name of the person you love “still carries tradition” and that it was something she didn’t even consider not doing when she married the 50-year-old actor.
“What? Really?” Lopez asked. “People are still going to call me Jennifer Lopez. But my legal name will be Mrs. Affleck because we’re joined together. We’re husband and wife. I’m proud of that. I don’t think that’s a problem.”
When the reporter questioned if she had any desire for the “Good Will Hunting” star to be Mr. Lopez, the singer chuckled.
“No! It’s not traditional,” Lopez explained. “It doesn’t have any romance to it. It feels like it’s a power move, you know what I mean? I’m very much in control of my own life and destiny and feel empowered as a woman and as a person.”
“I can understand that people have their feelings about it, and that’s okay, too,” she added. “But if you want to know how I feel about it, I just feel like it’s romantic. It still carries tradition and romance to me, and maybe I’m just that kind of girl.”
The writer of a July New York Times op-ed headlined “Why It Matters That J. Lo Is Now J. Aff” termed the concept of assuming a man’s last name “cringe-y,” “peak sexism,” and more.
“Ms. Affleck may be surrendering to the power of love with this, her fourth marriage,” the op-ed read. “But given the cringe-y history behind the practice, a woman taking her husband’s last name feels to me like a submission — a gesture that doesn’t say ‘I belong with him’ so much as ‘I belong to him.’ And at this fraught moment for feminism in America, a woman like the former Jennifer Lopez deciding to change her name feels especially dispiriting.”