JLo Says She Almost Quit Show Business Over Jokes About Her Ass

Jennifer Lopez’s new documentary, Halftime, was released today on Netflix. So far, Halftime has made headlines for a scene where JLo gets emotional over her Oscar snub for Hustlers, and another where she says that sharing the stage with Shakira for the 2020 Super Bowl was “the worst idea in the world.” Now, the attention has gone to her ass. In the doc, JLo reflects on the sexist media coverage she received in the late nineties and early 2000s. She says the talk about her big butt and relationship with Ben Affleck made her feel like “a joke,” and that it made her almost quit show business. I don’t want to live in a world where JLo quit in the early aughts! In that timeline, we wouldn’t have the supremely underrated 2005 horn-heavy R&B jam, “Get Right”!

In the documentary, Jennifer says she was always proud of her body, but she admits the scrutiny got to her, via Yahoo!:

“I grew up around women with curves, so it was nothing ever I was ashamed of,” she explains.

“It was hard when you think people think you’re a joke, like you’re a punchline,” she admits. “But I wound up affecting things in a way that I never intended to affect them.”

She says things got extra difficult after she wore that famous green Versace dress and Bennifer became Hollywood’s hottest tabloid couple:

“No matter what I achieved, their appetite to cover my personal life overshadowed everything that was happening in my career. I just had a very low self esteem,” Lopez admits. “I really believed a lot of what they said, which was that I wasn’t any good — I wasn’t a good singer, I wasn’t a good actress, I wasn’t a good dancer, I wasn’t good at anything. I just didn’t even belong here why wouldn’t I just go away.”

Affleck makes his only appearance in the documentary to reflect on what he witnessed when they were first together from 2002 to 2004. “I said to her once, ‘Doesn’t this bother you?’ And she said, ‘I’m Latina, I’m a woman I expected this.’ You just don’t expect it. You expect to be treated fairly,” he recalls.

Lopez says there were “many times” she wanted to give up and quit. “I had to really figure out who I was and believe in that and not believe anything else,” she shares.

An old Access Hollywood interview, with the totally non-problematic Billy Bush, is shown in the documentary. Billy asks Jennifer, “How do you feel about your butt?” JLo gets awkward and tries to deflect, but Billy doesn’t let up. Here’s that interview, from 2002:

JLo went on Oprah in 1999, and she talked about the hullabaloo over her butt. She says, “For me, it’s normal, cuz I grew up in the Bronx!” Oprah replies, “Cuz Black women have had this bottom all our lives!” JLo adds, “And Latin women are the same way! We’re shaped like that!” She says that people (read: whites) “are not really exposed to that on the daily, ’til, lately, with the Latin explosion!”:

Man oh man. To think that we used to think JLo’s ass was big! Compared to the gargantuan fake butts of today (the Kardashians, Nicki Minaj, Iggy Azalea, the dozens of influencers Tristan Thompson cheats with), JLo’s posterior is positively pancake.

Pic: ROGER WONG/INSTARimages.com