Jennifer Lopez Shared How She Deals With Feeling Like a ‘Fraud’
Jennifer Lopez has seen major success as an actor and singer for years, but she admitted she still deals with feelings of inadequacy. She explained that when the public, media, and others in her industry doubt her, she sometimes begins to believe them. Lopez shared how she crushes that feeling before it leaves her too defeated.
Jennifer Lopez admitted she has felt like a fraud in her industry
Though Lopez has had an enviable career with many fans, she still has her detractors. People have called her a diva, disparaged her abilities as a singer, and generally joked about her. She admitted that this type of reaction has made her doubt herself.
“I think sometimes people try to make you feel like you’re a fraud,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “And maybe you’re afraid you’re one too.”
She doesn’t allow herself to wallow in this feeling, though. Lopez said she has to remind herself that she deserves her success.
“Then finally you go, ‘Wait, I’m not lying. I’ve been doing this a long time. This is not a mistake. I worked hard to be here,’” she said. “And you know what? Congratulations to myself. Not in an arrogant way, by any means. It’s like, ‘You’re doing good, baby. Give yourself a break.’”
Jennifer Lopez said she believes people are hard on her because she is a woman
Lopez has been at the top of her game for nearly 30 years. She prides herself in her ability to keep her career afloat for so long.
“I feel very proud that I’ve survived as long as I have in this business,” she said. “At this point in my life, I’m trying to give myself more credit. It’s hard when people are always telling you that you’re not good at things or saying, ‘Why is she successful?’”
She believes that the fact that she is a woman has a lot to do with why people doubt her.
“You get a lot of that when you’re a successful woman. You don’t get that as much when you’re a man,” she said. “The thing about people, women especially, is that you can have 12 people telling you you’re amazing, but that one person kind of putting you down, that’s the voice that sticks in your head.”
She said she began to rely too much on the opinions of others
According to Lopez, she ignored her intuition when she married Marc Anthony. Upon reflection, she realized that she had done the same thing with her career.
“When I think back on it, years earlier I had reached a similar moment in my career,” Lopez wrote in her book True Love. “It was during a time when I was getting to do things that I had hardly let myself dream about when I was a little girl. Platinum albums, movie roles opposite Jack Nicholson, George Clooney, Sean Penn … I felt like I was doing it on my own terms, but actually, I wasn’t.”
As a result, she began to care more about the desires and opinions of others than her own needs.
“I was mainly following the advice of managers, record executives, and stylists,” she wrote. “They had the best of intentions, but because I wasn’t also listening to myself, I ended up caring more and more about what they wanted and how I was perceived by the public and the media than what I knew was right for me as an artist. Instead of measuring my success and value by my own standards, I was measuring it by how others perceived me.”
She said she came to realize that she had to be the one driving her career.
