Jennifer Lopez said she was shocked after learning about The New York Times op-ed that expressed disappointment when the singer took Ben Affleck’s last name after the two tied the knot at a Las Vegas chapel in July.
The 53-year-old singer admitted the idea of taking the name of the person you love “still carries tradition” and was something she didn’t even think about not doing when she married the 50-year-old actor, Vogue reported.
“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.”
The singer laughed when the interviewer asked if any part of her would want the “Good Will Hunting” star to be Mr. Lopez.
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“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.”
In the July NYT op-ed titled, “Why It Matters That J. Lo Is Now J. Aff,” the writer called the idea of taking a man’s last name “cringe-y,” “peak patriarchy,” 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.”
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