Jennifer Lopez Didn’t Appreciate Her Looks When She Was in Her 20s
Jennifer Lopez seems to have gotten more confident in her older years. So much so that, in hindsight, she realized she lacked that same kind of confidence when she was younger.
Jennifer Lopez has learned to appreciate her looks in her more mature years
Lopez confided that she couldn’t have been in a more different place mentally than she was in her twenties. Perhaps professionally as well, as Lopez was just starting to come into her own as a star back then.
In her mid-to-late 20s, Lopez starred in many blockbuster features and classics, such as Money Train, Selena, and Anaconda. However, approaching A-list status also attracted a lot of attention from the media and tabloids, which Lopez used to worry about a great deal.
“I remember going, ‘Oh, my God — they said this about me! What am I going to do? It’s not true,’” Lopez once told W. “Then I realized: Nobody cares. In the Bronx, nobody cares. Being happy as a person, being a good mom, doing good work — that’s fulfilling to me.”
She also realized, as she matured, how the media influenced her confidence. Although it took some time, Lopez eventually grew out of these insecurities.
“Men in their twenties are very confident and cocky, and women are super-insecure. And then it flips: Men get super-insecure, and women get comfortable in their own skin in a way that makes them more beautiful,” she added. “I never appreciated my body or my looks when I was in my twenties. Now I’m like, Look at me! Look at you! Not in a conceited or arrogant way — I just appreciate myself in a way I didn’t when I was that age. And it’s not about perfection. I like the scars that I have.”
Jennifer Lopez feels the film industry treats older women with more respect than in the past
There used to be a running theme in the film industry that women over the age of 30 weren’t marketable or hirable. However, Lopez felt Hollywood was progressing past those ideas, seeing the value of female actors in their more mature years.
“It has changed a lot, and I think it’s appropriate,” Lopez said in a 2023 interview with Elle. “As you get older and you have more experience, you become a richer human being, and you have more to offer. The idea of, ‘There’s nothing really valuable about watching a woman over 30 is so ridiculous, it’s the opposite of right. It just makes me laugh.”
Lopez added that she also had no intention of slowing down anytime soon.
“I see myself working [as long as] I want to,” she said. “I don’t know what that age is. It might be 70, it might be 80, it might be 90, I don’t know. But I know that it’s there for me if I want it, and I want to create it. That has always been the mindset that I’ve had: to never let anybody put me in a box because of where I was born, where I’m from, what age I am, anything like that. Those boundaries don’t exist for me.”
It seems Lopez has kept true to her word these last couple of years. The 2020s have seen the actor as busy as ever. Recently, she’s starred in features like Marry Me, Atlas, and Unstoppable. Earlier this year, the artist also released her ninth studio album, This Is Me…Now. The record was tied to her documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told.
