Jennifer Lopez is ready to dispel the stereotypes of ageism and in particular, the portrayal of older women in the entertainment industry. That is, getting old doesn’t have to be a bad thing. In fact, getting old can be good.
“As you get older and you have more experience, you become a richer human being and you have more to offer,” the 54-year-old Lopez told Elle magazine. “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, “People have realized that women just get sexier as they get older. They get more learned and more rich with character. All of that is very beautiful and attractive, and not just physically, but on the inside, the beauty that you gain as you get older, the wisdom you gain.”
Lopez, who is getting ready to release her ninth studio album, “This is Me… Now,” on February 16th, says she doesn’t have any set date or age where she’ll be ready to stop working.
“I don’t know what that age is. It might be 70, it might be 80, it might be 90, I don’t know,” she said. “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.”
“This is Me… Now” will be Lopez’ first studio album release in almost a decade and will serve as a quasi-companion album to her 2002 album “This is Me… Then,” which featured such hits as “All I Have” and “Jenny from the Block.”
Lopez added that the time we’re living in now is a great time for women of all ages to create in the entertainment industry.
“With all the great women producers, directors, and actors who are taking more control of their careers and creating their own material, we’re in a very exciting time for women in Hollywood,” Lopez said. “We’re not just on the corners of life or on the outside of the stories. We are the stories.”
What do you think of Jennifer Lopez’s thoughts on aging in the entertainment industry? Do you think people have realized that “women just get sexier as they get older?” Do you think we should dispel negative stereotypes of older women in entertainment? Let us know in the comments.
