Movies

Jennifer Lopez explains why she took Ben Affleck’s last name after getting married

November 8, 2022

Jennifer Lopez reacted to the backlash when she took Ben Affleck’s last name after getting married.
Lopez told Vogue she considered it a “power move” and felt it was “romantic.”
“It always carries tradition and romance for me, and maybe I’m just that kind of girl,” she said.

Jennifer Lopez has reacted to the backlash she faced when she took Ben Affleck’s last name after their Vegas wedding this summer.

The artist opened up about their relationship in a cover story for Vogue’s December 2022 issue, published Tuesday.

Lopez’s interviewer, Rob Haskell, referred to a New York Times opinion piece published days after her and Affleck’s nuptials, criticizing the singer for taking her husband’s last name “given of the cringe-worthy history behind the practice”.

“At this difficult time for feminism in America, a woman like former Jennifer Lopez who decides to change her name is especially disheartening,” Jennifer Weiner wrote for The New York Times.

Lopez expressed her confusion in her cover story, saying, “What? Really?”

“People are still going to call me Jennifer Lopez,” she explained. “But my legal name will be Mrs. Affleck because we’re united. We’re husband and wife. I’m proud of that. I don’t think that’s a problem.”

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez were already engaged in the early 2000s.

Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for 20th Century Studios

Lopez and Affleck, who first met from 2002 to 2004, rekindled their relationship in 2021.

At the time, Lopez and her fiancé Alex Rodriguez broke up and Affleck and actor Ana de Armas ended their romance.

Lopez told Vogue that she and Affleck started talking again after he emailed her letting her know he was speaking of her in glowing terms when asked to comment on a cover story. for InStyle on the “Hustlers” star.

“I’ve never been shy about saying that for me, I always felt like there was real love out there, real love out there,” she told Vogue. “People in my life know he was a very, very special person in my life. When we reconnected, those feelings for me were still very real.”

Lopez announced her second engagement with Affleck via her newsletter, On the JLo, in April 2022.

After getting married in Vegas in July, Lopez shared the news, along with photos, in her newsletter. They had a second, more formal wedding celebration in Georgia in August.

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez married twice in 2022.

Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP

The ‘Marry Me’ star said the Vegas nuptials were “exactly what we wanted” and called it “the best night of our lives.”

“Love is a good thing, maybe the best thing, and it’s worth the wait,” she concluded, signing the note as Ms. Jennifer Lynn Affleck.

Lopez defended her decision to take Affleck’s name during her interview with Vogue, saying she doesn’t consider it anti-feminist.

“It’s like a coup de force, you know what I mean?” she says. “I am very in control of my own life and destiny and feel empowered as a woman and as a person.”

“I can understand people having their feelings about it, and that’s okay too. But if you want to know how I feel about it, I just feel like it’s romantic. It still carries the tradition and romance for me, and maybe I’m just that kind of girl.”