Diversity is something Hollywood has clearly been making efforts to achieve in recent years, after decades when such things were not seen as important. Jennifer Lopez was one of the few Latin stars of this generation, and now she’s talking about what it was like to be the only person who looks like her.
In a recent interview with today (Across People) The new Mrs. Ben Affleck says that while she felt like the only person in the room who was Latino, that wasn’t exactly a bad thing. She says she felt like a “unicorn” when no one else in the room looked like her. Lopez explains…
And so when I walked into these worlds, like Hollywood, where we weren’t actors at all, I felt like a unicorn. I am latin. I’m Jennifer Lopez from the Bronx. My parents are from Puerto Rico, I am Puerto Rican. And I think it made me feel special.
Perhaps Lopez’s unique perspective is part of what helped her succeed in an environment like the one she was in. She embraced who she is, and thought that was what made her unique, because the rest of Hollywood wasn’t diverse enough. To make more people like her inside it.
This has begun to slowly change in recent years. Hollywood is beginning to understand the value of diversity and to put diverse faces on screen, if for no other reason than these stars can attract a diverse audience that enhances the bottom line. Jennifer Lopez has probably inspired a generation of women who started out like her to follow in her footsteps.
But there were other ways that Jennifer Lopez just didn’t fit in, either. In addition to her ethnicity, Lopez says her body also doesn’t look like other women in Hollywood. While Lopez’s body will, after all, be part of what she is, she says the standard of beauty when she started was very different. But then again, she was still seeing herself beautiful and embracing her body. Lopez continues…
Even the whole body was such a thing. It was like everyone was like size zero supermodels, tall, blonde—beautiful, a certain kind of beauty—but there were other types of beauties that I grew up with.
53-year-old Jennifer Lopez may be about to become a unicorn again. Hollywood glorifies young and old actors, especially women, who don’t always get roles with the same frequency that they did before. Although it’s possible, after her recent marriage to Ben Affleck, Lopez simply won’t work as much, as she seems pretty happy to focus on her personal life.
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