This Is Me…Now: A Love Story cements Jennifer Lopez's status as a camp gay icon
With a career spanning decades, Jennifer Lopez has been many things to many people, including rom-com queen, iconic pop star, and one half of the endlessly memeable Bennifer (just to name a few). But thanks to her new visual album, This Is Me… Now: A Love Story, J-Lo has added sex addict, perpetual bride, and flower petal factory worker to her resume as well with a film that transcends time, space, and common sense too if that batshit trailer was anything to go by.
But when she's not out touring the world or saving cinema, Jennifer Lopez has also taken on the role of straight ally to her sizable queer fanbase— and she's an incredibly camp one at that. With the release of This Is Me… Now, a film specifically designed with the gays in mind, there's no better time to celebrate that in full, so let's get loud and give J-Lo her flowers. It's the least we can do after the Oscars robbed her of that Hustlers nom.
It goes without saying that Mariah might not know her, but the gays sure do, because Jennifer has given us so much more than just endless bops and Will & Grace cameos. Remember when she won the GLAAD Vanguard Award back in 2014? It wasn't for playing a lesbian in Gigli, that's for sure.
A few years earlier, Jennifer helped struggling showrunners Peter Paige and Bradley Bredeweg get their idea for a series off the ground through her company, Nuyorican Productions. The result was The Fosters, a groundbreaking show that included authentic trans representation and the youngest same-sex kiss ever shown on TV. It also gave us the gift of Noah Centineo, for which we will always be grateful.
In her GLAAD acceptance speech, J-Lo thanked queer fans for being "always on the floor and in my heart,” explaining that "If I do anything that makes one child out there feel empowered... my dream has come true.” And that's exactly what she did with The Fosters, which might not have existed at all without her involvement.
During that speech, and again in an open letter she later wrote as part of Billboard’s 2017 Pride celebration, Lopez spoke of her gay aunt whose struggles helped inspire her work on the show: “Life was different and it is heartbreaking for me to think about it now. The people she watched on TV didn’t represent her. Movies didn’t represent her. She thought she was alone.” Jennifer has since channelled that energy into advocating for her non-binary nibling Brendon Scholl, and she continues to fight tirelessly for the queer rights of others too.
In her new film, Lopez plays a hopeless romantic reflecting on her experiences with love (Credit: Amazon Studios)
Back in 2016, J-Lo teamed up with Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda to record a fundraising song titled "Love Make the World Go Round" for the victims of the Pulse shooting, and over the years, she's raised millions more for HIV/AIDS research. So when you take your prep each morning, remember that Jennifer's helping you do it, do it, you do it, do it, you're doin' it well *groans in noughties nostalgia*.
Unfortunately, these achievements are often overlooked, much like her album Brave was in 2007. But one achievement that's impossible to overlook is Jennifer's new film, "This Is Me… Now", where she stars as herself in a musical about her own life. Think Jupiter Ascending meets The Wedding Planner with just a dash of Wild, Wild West on what looks like a Marvel budget, but we mean the earlier stuff, not that Quantumania abomination. Now filter all that through the "heart, soul, and dreams" of Jennifer Lopez. In short, it's giving masterpiece, one that rivals even Monster-In-Law in the annals of camp, cinematic greatness. With all that going on, the ambition that J-Lo's brought to this film is matched only by how earnest it all is. When she's not travelling through desert plains and steampunk factories or many, many weddings, Jennifer just casually reels off lines like, "I believe in soulmates and signs and hummingbirds and that love is real."
As if that wasn't perfect enough, she's also brought in celebrity friends like Keke Palmer, Sofía Vergara, and THE Jane Fonda to ham it up as cosmic beings who make puns such as "Getting it right" and old movie references like "At least she's not shopping online for a new wedding dress." Put that second one in the Fonda Hall of Fame along with Monster-in-Law's "I could just kill that dog-walking slut" and "I thought you were dead, but evil doesn't die so easily." Then there's the scene where Jennifer mouths the words to Barbra Streisand's The Way We Were while recovering from heartbreak. And we mean every single word, lip synced to perfection from the comfort of her couch. Celebrities, they're gay. Just like us!
That scene alone would be enough to make the case for instant icon status to the gay overlords who watch over us, regardless of anything else Jennifer did before making her magnum opus. But it bears repeating that this camp masterpiece of a film is just the latest in a long line of contributions J-Lo has made to the gay community. Because make no mistake, it is the queers and queers alone who will fully appreciate the majesty of this frankly absurd endeavour.
Like the album Brave — we're not letting that one go — many will dismiss the film outright as a mess, and they'd be right, technically. But that's Jennifer's charm right there. Unlike other artists, she's not afraid to be earnest and all kinds of ridiculous in the name of love. So whether she's changing the face of cinema or getting loud in support of the LGBTQ+ community, remember that Lopez is the rare gay icon who uses her voice to uplift us beyond just the music in tangible ways that actually matter.
And that's why, in the words of Jennifer herself, we can't get enough.