Jennifer Lopez has come a long way in her attitudes about motherhood. The musician and actor, who has teenage twins with singer Marc Anthony and is now the stepmother of three more children, told Vogue her style of parenting is, "I can hold a boundary with you but also be your ally."
That's different from the way she says she was raised, and also seems to be in marked contrast to her views of romantic love. Self-actualization is difficult to hold on to when you become a parent, especially a mother, but it can also be rough for a woman to stay herself in the context of marriage. When Lopez married actor Ben Affleck in the summer of 2022, although she is still performing as Lopez, she legally changed her last name to Affleck, something that didn't sit well with writers at The New York Times and others. The New York Times called the name change the "most notable of all the emerging details" about the nuptials and described it as "one of the most public acts of submission that a person can perform."
It's not that she's taken her husband's name. It's that she wouldn't even consider him taking hers.
In the new Vogue interview, Lopez reaffirmed her decision to change her name to Jennifer Lynn Affleck, saying, "My legal name will be Mrs. Affleck because we're joined together. We're husband and wife. I'm proud of that. I don't think that's a problem." Affleck, whom Lopez first met, dated and was engaged to in the early 2000s before the couple broke up, is Lopez's fourth husband. Lopez was previously married to actor and producer Ojani Noa, dancer and choreographer Cris Judd, and Anthony – and was engaged to former Yankee Alex Rodriguez. Lopez is Affleck's second wife, after his 2005 marriage to actor Jennifer Garner ended in divorce in 2018, and both Affleck and Lopez have brought children to their marriage together.
It's a complicated history and perhaps a shared last name might help a blended family feel more unified, but Lopez's children have their father's legal last name. This is also the first time Lopez has taken a husband's name, despite three previous marriages. The New York Times questioned, "What does it mean that on her fourth husband she changes her surname? That this is the real one?" It's hard not to read some anxiety in the name change, that Mrs. Affleck is like a neon sign (which Lopez actually has in her dressing room) broadcasting the durability of this marriage. It's difficult to come back from a name change. It takes paperwork and waiting in line.
Why does the woman have to make that public declaration of fidelity and not the man?
Lopez and Affleck were treated terribly by the press during their first attempt at a relationship, especially her, ranging from a vicious caricature on "South Park" to racist jokes told by late night comedians like Conan O'Brien. The name change could be a pronouncement that they came through the fire together, that after a period of years, during which time they each married and divorced other people, they are uber-committed to each other. But why does the woman have to make that public declaration of fidelity and not the man?
When asked if Affleck might consider changing his last name to Lopez instead, Vogue describes Lopez as laughing at the thought: "No! It's not traditional. It doesn't have any romance to it." Romance – it's a word that encapsulates many fans' current view of the marriage, as a gauzy, destined fairy tale finally coming true ("Lopez believes in the fairy tale," Vogue writes pointedly).
What's romantic about ownership? That's the origin of a wife changing her surname after all, like a deed of sale: a married woman becoming her husband's property, stamped with his name, instead of her father's. But most women still change their last name, out of societal expectation if nothing else, about 70-90% in the U.S., as Refinery29 notes in a piece about married women who regret it: "I felt like I was burying a part of my own identity — and for what? To adopt a surname that was laden with a history to which I had no connection?"
Lopez tried to spin it, like a weird kind of feminism, calling it "a power move."
Affleck has not been asked his thoughts on the manner publicly — if he offered to change his name and Lopez said no, or if he said no, or probably the most likely: the couple never talked about it at all. It's the inevitability that's the issue here, the lack of consideration, that Lopez laughed when a reporter even suggested a husband change his name. Lopez tried to spin it, like a weird kind of feminism, calling it "a power move, you know what I mean? I'm very much in control of my own life and destiny and feel empowered as a woman and as a person . . . It still carries tradition and romance to me."
The most romantic aspect of any relationship is mutual respect and equality, something Lopez has struggled with in the past. Vogue mentions Affleck's decades of substance abuse and equates Lopez's battle with what sounds an awfully lot like co-dependency, writing, "If Lopez has had a parallel compulsion, it is in the domain of love, and she has done her work, too," though what work is not specified.
Lopez described her struggle in past relationships as a battle to maintain self, "I was just like, 'Yes, do whatever you want! I can take it, I'll be here, because I'm really strong, and I'll be fine.' Little by little it chips away at your self-worth, your self-esteem, your soul." And yes, it's just a name, but Affleck's nickname for Lopez is "Little," referring, apparently, to her height and hopefully not her place in the world and the world of art, which is just as towering, if not more so, than his.
