Jennifer Lopez changes her name. Indeed, surname. And the controversy breaks out. The Puerto Rican singer and actress, who over the years has become almost a “brand” with the abbreviation of her name in JLo, has announced to the 219 million followers of her newsletter that she has decided to call herself Mrs. Jennifer Lynn Affleck after marriage to colleague Ben Affleck. Many of her female fans, however, did not like it.
The storm, at the moment, does not seem to touch the hugely popular star of “Jenny from the block”, in full honeymoon with the new wife Ben Affleck. The actress and singer celebrated todaySunday 24 July, its 53 years old, the wedding ring on her finger, while the photos of the paparazzi immortalized kisses and tender caresses in the most romantic city in the world: Paris. Puerto Rican from the Bronx and influencer ahead of time, JLo crowned her love dream last weekend, twenty years after her first love story with new husband Ben Affleck.
The announcement of the name change was previewed to fans receiving the “On the Jlo” newsletter (which may change its name at this point). Jennifer Lynn Affleck, therefore, said Lopez which also recalls Hispanic origins. Initially unnoticed, the star’s decision to change her surname to that of her husband left many women baffled: “A submission. A gesture that does not say ‘I partner with him, how much’ I belong to him ‘(the husband). “In a difficult time for feminism in America, Jennifer Lopez’s choice is” particularly daunting, “she wrote in the’ New York Times ‘ nor novelist Jennifer Weiner according to which the inevitable reference is to the Gilead of Margaret Atwood’s “Handmaid’s Tale”, the dystopian theocracy in which women in charge of reproduction such as the protagonist June Osborne (Elizabeth Moss) took the name of the Commander to whom they were enslaved: “OfFred “or” DiFred “.
In the It actually uses the majority of women do soOnly 20%, according to a 2015 analysis by the Times column The Upshot, continue to keep their surname after marriage. 80% instead assume that of her husband, with a gesture that, according to Weiner, sinks the roots in the patriarchy system and the medieval laws in which, for all legal purposes, a wife lost any individual identity at the moment of marriage. In the United States, however, until the 1970s, at least in some states, married women had to use their husband’s surname to vote, obtain a passport or credit card.
Meanwhile, regardless of the controversy, JLo celebrates with his Ben: after arriving on a private jet, dinner in Le Matignan near the Champs-Élysées, two hours on a park bench frolicking like Peynet’s sweethearts, then shopping in the Marais with their respective children and a stop at the Musee d’Orsay. But gestures matter. Names confer identity. For Rachael Robnett, a psychologist at the University of Nevada, “JLo’s choice reflects the greater status and power of men in relationships and in society.” Imagine for a moment if Ben Affleck had chosen to call himself Lopez: “People consider taking the husband’s surname a nice tradition,” said Robnett. “But power is at stake. And power matters.”