Jennifer Lopez celebrated her 49th birthday yesterday. And she showed us all of what all of her looks at 49 years old:
That phrase, “living your best life”, gets thrown around a lot. But where JLo is concerned? Right now, I really believe it. And, fine, we’ll get to how Alex Rodriguez fits into that in a minute. First, let’s talk about looks. And it’s more than just a superficial conversation. I posted shots of Julia Roberts the other day, who is 50, looking incredible on a photo shoot. Angela Bassett, almost 60, has been serving it better than almost everyone else lately on the red carpet. I just saw Crazy Rich Asians last night (more on this to come soon, I promise) and Michelle Yeoh, who is about to turn 56, is unchanged. Seriously. I’ve been watching her for 30 years, she is the same.
And while, sure, on the one hand, we’re not supposed to focus so much on beauty standards, part of the reason why beauty standards, in the past, have been damaging, is because they were so limited and limiting. In the past, at least when I was growing up, say when I was 15, I used to think of a 40-year-old woman as halfway into the crypt. A 60-year-old? Looked prehistoric.
Is it just the ignorant memory of youth or… are there are other factors at play?
We know better how to take care of ourselves these days, definitely. But also, we didn’t see aging women aging publicly back then, especially not in pop culture. Remember, actresses and entertainers past a certain age weren’t viable. They weren’t casting women over 35. If they did cast women over 35, they were meant to play characters much, much older so that our perception of 35 or 40 or 50 may not have been realistic. Storytelling though, as we’ve seen, has changed. It’s still not ideal, of course, but there are opportunities for women over 35 to keep working, to keep acting, to keep being seen. And in seeing them, our perception of “what 40 can look like” or “what 50 can look like” or “what 60 can look like” is changing. Is this a legit theory? Or am I only saying this because, ha, I’m getting older?
Back to JLo and her birthday, she was with her kids and ARod and his kids and…he dedicated two IG posts to her that were actually *just* about her. Here’s the first, a gallery of his favourite shots of her, JUST her, beginning with a photo of this bitch with no makeup on, as beautiful as she ever was 20 years ago:
Note the caption. The caption is not about ARod, it’s about JLo.
Here’s another gallery, and once again JLo is the primary focus:
What is the point here? The point is that if even ARod, who can suck his own dick better than almost everyone else, can for one day put someone else first, it says a lot about Justin Timberlake, non?
I will take a shot at that motherf-cker any chance I can.
