Jennifer Lopez covers the new issue of Allure and I’m surprised at the cover look they chose for this issue for their 30th anniversary. Maybe that was the point – to surprise. Because even though JLo changes her hair all the time, it’s usually a familiar rotation: topknot, voluminous waves, voluminous blowout, high pony, or half-pony, or shoulder length curls if she’s giving the extensions a break. In that rotation is almost never…a pixie cut. But that’s what they went with. And while no hairstyle can take away from JLo’s face, and that famous glow, I don’t think it’s her best style. Halle Berry pixie cut? Definitely. Zoe Kravitz, Winona Ryder, Kristen Stewart, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus – all of them yes. JLo? Not my favourite. 

 

JLo with no hair visible and wrapped in a sparkly headscarf though? 100%. All in. 

As for the interview, most of this is pretty standard JLo profile – all about how far she’s taken her career, what an icon she is, and the JLo work ethic. Jennifer Lopez works hard, non-stop hustle, and she’s always going top speed…so it’s interesting to hear about how she was forced to slow down this year because of COVID. Instead of planning their wedding and getting married (she said it was originally supposed to be overseas – Dominican Republic, do you think? Or, like, Venice?) she and Alex Rodriguez went to therapy: 

“We got to work on ourselves. We did therapy. I think it was really helpful for us in our relationship.”

 

On the one hand, I love this – this normalisation of therapy for couples, not necessarily when something’s wrong, but like going to the gym; it’s like training, relationship training. On the gossip hand, especially given the tea that was spilled by the cast of Southern Charm and ARod’s still mysterious connection to Madison LeCroy, that might be an interesting session between them. Although, since it’s JLo, and nothing sticks to JLo, people are already starting to forget about whatever shadiness ARod may or may not have been up to in Madison’s DMs. 

My favourite part of the interview is when JLo is asked about success, about her achievements, and of course last year around this time we were just coming off award season – she was part of it… but not all of it. Because, of course, she was not nominated for an Oscar for her performance – her AMAZING performance – in Hustlers. And she admits, yeah, it was a bummer. I don’t think we hear this enough. I don’t think we hear celebrities say so clearly how much they wanted it, and that it sucks that it didn’t happen. But JLo goes there: 

 

“I was talking about this the other day. [My production partner] Elaine [Goldsmith-Thomas] made a post where she listed all the things I had been nominated for and won that season,” says Lopez, referring to the post-Hustlers awards season. “And when it came to the Oscars, it was so obviously absent. It was a sting.”

A sting. Not a blow, but a sting. Of course it is! The usual stock answer comes after that (I don’t do this for the awards), fair enough, we’ve heard it before, but I appreciate that she leads with “it was a sting”, that she confirms that it mattered to her, when so many of them pretend that it doesn’t, that the work is the reward. And besides, her stock answer really actually wasn’t all that stock when you think about what she’s really getting at here:

“I was like, ‘Okay, when you’re supposedly in everybody else’s mind supposed to be nominated and you’re not, what does that mean? Is it really real? Are the other ones real and this one isn’t?’ It came to a point where I was like, ‘This is not why I do this. I don’t do this to have 10 Oscars sitting on my mantel or 20 Grammys.’”

 

Jennifer Lopez is telling us that even she, JLo, who has everything, who’s been on every stage, who is known everywhere, the Super Bowl headliner at the time, had to deprogram and reprogram, had to ask herself why she does what she does. Because it got to her. And this might be why she’s so enduring and durable – because even though, yeah, JLo has it figured out, she can tell us when she still has to figure it out. Like, I know this is about Oscars which, in the big picture, especially when you’re JLo, is not exactly a loss, obviously. But she’s not saying here that it’s a huge loss, what she’s doing is not fronting like she doesn’t have an ego, like that sh-t doesn’t get in her head…the way it gets in ALL OF THEIR HEADS. Only they’re too in their heads to acknowledge what is a very human response, no matter if you’re a celebrity or a civilian. 

Click here to read the full JLo interview with Allure.