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Jennifer Lopez has hit back at the backlash she faced when she took Ben Affleck’s last name after their Vegas wedding over the summer.
The entertainer opened up about their relationship in a cover story for Vogue’s December 2022 issue, which was released on Tuesday. Lopez’s interviewer, Rob Haskell, cited a New York Times op-ed published days after she and Affleck married, criticizing the singer for taking her husband’s last name “given the chilling story behind the practice.” “At this difficult time for feminism in America, a woman like the former Jennifer Lopez deciding to change her name feels especially disappointing,” wrote Jennifer Weiner for the New York Times. Lopez expressed her confusion on her cover, saying, “What? Really?” “People will still call me Jennifer Lopez,” she clarified. “But my legal name will be Mrs. Affleck because we’re united. We’re husband and wife. I’m proud of that. I don’t think that’s a problem.” Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez were previously engaged in the early 2000s. Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for 20th Century Studios Lopez and Affleck, who were first linked from 2002 to 2004, rekindled their relationship in 2021. Around that time, Lopez and then-fiancé Alex Rodriguez broke up, and Affleck and actress Ana de Armas ended their romance. Lopez told Vogue that she and Affleck started talking again after he sent her an email letting her know he spoke highly of her when he was asked to comment on an InStyle cover story about the “Hustlers” star. “I’ve never shied away from the fact that for me, I’ve always felt that there was a real love there, a true love there,” she told Vogue. “The 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.” Lopez announced her and Affleck’s second engagement through her newsletter, On the JLo, in April 2022. After tying the knot in Vegas in July, Lopez shared the news, along with photos, on her newsletter. They had a second, more formal wedding celebration in Georgia in August. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez have two weddings in 2022. Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP The ‘Marry Me’ star said the Vegas wedding was ‘exactly what we wanted’ and called it ‘the best night of our lives’. “Love is a wonderful thing, perhaps the best of things – and worth waiting for,” she concluded, signing the note as Mrs. Jennifer Lynn Affleck. Lopez defended her decision to take Affleck’s name during her Vogue interview, saying she did not consider it anti-feminist. “I feel like it’s a power move, you know what I mean?” he said. “I am in control of my life and my destiny and I feel empowered as a woman and as a person.” “I can understand that people have their feelings about it, and that’s fine too. But if you want to know how I feel about it, I feel like it’s romantic. It still carries tradition and romance to me, and maybe I’m just such a girl.”