Jennifer Lopez doesn’t think it’s a problem that she took husband Ben Affleck’s last name ― despite the criticism.
“People are still going to call me Jennifer Lopez. But my legal name will be Mrs. Affleck because we’re joined together,” the “Marry Me” actor said in Vogue’s December issue. “We’re husband and wife. I’m proud of that. I don’t think that’s a problem.”
Lopez and the Vogue interviewer were discussing the name change in light of a New York Times opinion piece that said the entertainer’s decision to go by Mrs. Affleck was “especially dispiriting” due to “the cringe-y history behind the practice.”
“I’m very much in control of my own life and destiny and feel empowered as a woman and as a person,” Lopez told Vogue. “I can understand that people have their feelings about it, and that’s okay, too. But if you want to know how I feel about it, I just feel like it’s romantic. It still carries tradition and romance to me, and maybe I’m just that kind of girl.”
Annie Leibovitz for Vogue
Lopez and Affleck got engaged for a second time in April 2022, after rekindling their early-2000s romance that ended in a broken engagement in 2004. The two tied the knot twice: first at A Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas in July, followed by a bigger celebration at Affleck’s home in Georgia in August.
“I always felt like there was a real love there, a true love there,” Lopez told Vogue of reuniting with Affleck after almost two decades. “People in my life know that he was a very, very special person in my life. When we reconnected, those feelings for me were still very real.”
“I don’t know that I recommend this for everybody,” Lopez added. “Sometimes you outgrow each other, or you just grow differently. The two of us, we lost each other and found each other.”
To read more of Lopez’s profile, head to Vogue. The December issue hits newsstands on Nov. 15.