A couple of years ago, when Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s marriage fell apart, even though he was the one who supposedly handled it like an asshole, and the media reporting it misogynistically, she was the one who was clowned on social media.

TikTok was basically JLo hate central until they found another target in Blake Lively a couple months later. And all that started up again last week when JLo posed for the GlamBot at the Golden Globes after Cole Walliser shared it on Instagram. 

As I wrote about JLo in my Globes coverage from the night, it wasn’t her best look. The dress was terrible, and her glow was missing because her makeup wasn’t properly blended. Still, JLo will never turn down a pose… and she did her thing, serving the expression she has been serving for 30 years now – mouth slightly open, sex eyes turned on, only the best angles represented. Everybody knows what JLo can do on a carpet.

What people are taking issue with is that she didn’t seem friendly to Cole. Her detractors are saying she was rude, that she should have smiled at him, at least. Because if a woman doesn’t smile all the time, if she doesn’t make sure to radiate warmth all the time, automatically she’s a bitch. And a bitch is the worst thing a woman can be.

I guess the anti-JLo rhetoric has been so loud the last few days, Cole felt compelled to post a video today explaining that there wasn’t an issue, that he was not offended by her, that the interaction was pretty standard with how sh-t works on the red carpet.

He probably meant well but I don’t know if he’s made it any better. When the internet decides on a narrative, it’s practically unchangeable. So now the new theory is that she and/or her team asked or demanded that Cole defend her. Really, there’s no winning in these situations.

You know who I keep thinking about from the Globes though? Sean Penn.

A photo of Sean smoking during the event, indoors, went a little bit viral that night and the net morning.

Yes, there were some people who were critical of him. But nowhere near the amount of noise that’s following JLo after she did her job, posed for the camera, and went inside for the awards. In fact, here’s a tweet that was posted three days after the Globes and has been viewed over a million times since.

And if you browse through the comments on socials related to the posts about Sean smoking at the Globes, there’s a healthy amount of “haha this is hilarious” reaction to balance out whatever dragging there might be over the fact that he was a relentless health violation that night. Is JLo really a bigger villain than Sean Penn?!

To clarify, it’s not that I’m all that precious about smoking. I used to be a smoker, and in my anecdotal experience, people who quit smoking fall into two categories: they practically become evangelists about not smoking anymore, or they stay away from it but they miss it, nostalgic for all the smoking times in their lives, because they were such fun times. I fall into the latter category, I don’t smoke cigarettes anymore, but I also don’t demonise smoking or smokers.

Sean Penn, however, is a different story. First of all, zoom in on that shot of him smoking inside the Globes – he put out his cigarettes in the water glass, which is an added layer of disgusting. Like, not only was his smoke wafting around that ballroom (and the hotel staff’s efforts to get him to stop were futile) but people had to see those soggy cigarette butts on the table.

Second, and even more offensive, there was at least one child sitting close by, Jacobi Jupe, and at least two pregnant women at the front tables: Wunmi Mosaku and Hailee Steinfeld. Where’s the energy in defending their right to grow up and grow their babies without being assaulted by Sean Penn’s smoke?

Imagine the position you must hold in the industry where no one can get you to stop polluting an enclosed environment. And how intimidating you must be when the Chairman of Hollywood, George Clooney, is at the table next door and can’t get you to stop. When the Queen Mother of Actresses, Julia Roberts, a woman who will not hold back from throwing down scolding when she’s in the mood, didn’t want to get into it either.

And even the internet couldn’t hold up an erection for long enough to mobilise a pile-on but instead is out here caping for an Oscar nomination because that movie is so f-cking cool.

If the algorithm is any indication, going by the volume of comments and tweets and TikToks and reposts about JLo, her not smiling at Cole Walliser is much more of a pop culture crime than Sean Penn smoking around pregnant women and children. Message received!

Attached: Sean Penn in Santa Monica alongside his girlfriend, Valeria Nicov, on January 14, 2026, and Jennifer Lopez out in Beverly Hills that same day.

Jennifer Lopez out in Beverly Hills and Sean Penn in Santa Monica alongside his girlfriend, Valeria Nicov, on January 14, 2026

Photo credits: GAMR / BACKGRID

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