First of all, this is not a very good cover for Jennifer Lopez in the sense that… they just cropped the image too close, and her head is in a weird angle. Her nose looks weird and she looks pissed off. And yet, this IS a good cover because of that awesome manicure and the clear shot of her engagement ring, given to her by Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod is good for something – choosing beautiful engagement rings. Jennifer covers the latest issue of Variety to promote Hustlers, which I really, really want to see (Jennifer not only stars, but produced the film too, and she had a hand in choosing the female director). The bulk of the profile is “J.Lo is awesome and still slaying” but there are some good quotes here and there. You can read the piece here. Some highlights:

She’s working with LA Reid again, even after he was ousted from Capital Records following sexual harassment allegations in 2017. “Benny and L.A. have a very long relationship. And I don’t know of a perfect person out there. Nobody wants to be judged by their worst moment when they’ve lived a life when they’ve done a lot of great things. And that doesn’t excuse any behavior, because I don’t. It’s about going, ‘Oh, that was wrong, and I need to be better.’”

She’s the boss: “I think I’m used to being the boss, which is a weird thing to say out loud. Nobody in my family was really the boss of anything. We all had bosses. But I guess in the past few years, I’ve come into my own in believing in myself and giving myself credit, knowing that ‘OK, you’re running the ship.’ I can be tough. I’m firm. I’m not a yeller or a screamer. I think nobody likes to disappoint me, because I get very quiet. I’m also relentless. I don’t have hours.”

The focus on her love life: “If you go back to Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross, they had such a hard time in the press. It was just a double standard of being a woman. It’s not a mystery. It’s probably what kids deal with, with social media now, like ‘Everybody hates me.’ No, everybody doesn’t hate you. It’s just a few people writing a few things.”

Spending five years as a judge on American Idol: “It was a big turning point in my career. Everybody was like, ‘Don’t do this. Your career will be over, and they won’t offer you any movies. They’ll think you’re a joke as an artist.’ And I was like, ‘The truth is, I’m not getting offered a whole bunch of movies, so what are they not going to offer me?’”

On A-Rod: “He loves being at every show that he can be at. I go to all his baseball games. There were times in my life when my career was going great, and my personal life was going OK. And there were times my personal life was stable, but my career was not great. This is the first time where I have a really beautiful alignment between the two. I think Alex brought that for me. I love it. We have a beautiful life.”

Performing a dance in a G-string in Hustlers: “I was terrified. I felt exposed. I was like, ‘I’ve never done anything like this. I’m going to be up there in f—ing dental floss. What is this? Who is this person?’ And then you get up there, and you have to have a ‘f— you,’ empowered attitude. You have to take your power back. You have to be so bold. It’s almost like when you say you’re a rock star, you have to be arrogant to go up there in front of all those people or you crumble. You realize it’s the same type of balls that it takes to do something like that. And these women have that. They are tough, hard, vulnerable and damaged. It’s a great character to play.”

[From Variety]

There’s a larger section in the piece where she talks a bit about her career slump during her marriage to Marc Anthony, and I find it interesting what she leaves unsaid – she talks about how she was focused on motherhood, focused on Marc and not really paying attention to her career, but I remember that time – she did care about her career in those years. The problem was that Marc was a controlling jackass who tried to manage and micromanage his wife, and her career suffered because of his involvement. She doesn’t say that though, and she’s never said that. Which… is sort of classy, right? She’s never really bad-mouthed Marc, even though she could, about many different subjects. I think that’s part of the reason why she likes being with Alex now – Alex isn’t trying to manage her or control her. He actually loves that she has her own sh-t going on.

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Photos courtesy of Variety.