Jennifer Lopez reacts to backlash to her taking Ben Affleck's last name after getting married: 'I just feel like it's romantic'

• Jennifer Lopez reacted to the backlash to her taking Ben Affleck's last name after getting married.
• Lopez told Vogue that she viewed it as a "power move" and felt like it was "romantic."

Jennifer Lopez reacted to the negative response she faced when she took Ben Affleck's last name following their Vegas wedding over the summer.

The entertainer opened up about their relationship in a cover story for the December 2022 issue of Vogue, released on Tuesday.

Lopez's interviewer, Rob Haskell, mentioned a New York Times opinion piece published days after her and Affleck's nuptials, criticizing the singer for taking her husband's last name given "given the cringe-y history behind the practice."

"At this fraught moment for feminism in America, a woman like the former Jennifer Lopez deciding to change her name feels especially dispiriting," Jennifer Weiner wrote for the New York Times.

Lopez voiced her confusion in her cover story, saying, "What? Really?"

"People are still going to call me Jennifer Lopez," she elaborated. "But my legal name will be Mrs. Affleck because we're joined together. We're husband and wife. I'm proud of that. I don't think that's a problem."

Lopez and Affleck, who first dated from 2002 to 2004, rekindled their relationship in 2021.

At the time, Lopez and then-fiancé Alex Rodriguez broke up and Affleck and actor Ana de Armas ended their romance.

Lopez told Vogue that she and Affleck started talking again after he sent her an email letting her know that he spoke highly of her when asked to provide a comment for a cover story for InStyle on the "Hustlers" star.

"I never shied away from the fact that for me, I always felt like there was a real love there, a true love there," she told Vogue. "People in my life know that he was a very, very special person in my life. When we reconnected, those feelings for me were still very real."

Lopez announced her and Affleck's second engagement via her newsletter, On the JLo, in April 2022.

After getting married in Vegas in July, Lopez shared the news, along with photos, in her newsletter. They had a second, more formal wedding celebration in Georgia in August.

The "Marry Me" star said that the Vegas nuptials were "exactly what we wanted" and called it the "best night of our lives."

"Love is a great thing, maybe the best of things-and worth waiting for," she concluded, signing the note as Mrs. Jennifer Lynn Affleck.

Lopez defended her decision to take Affleck's name during her Vogue interview, saying that she didn't view it as anti-feminist.

"It feels like it's a power move, you know what I mean?" she said. "I'm very much in control of my own life and destiny and feel empowered as a woman and as a person."

"I can understand that people have their feelings about it, and that's OK, too. But if you want to know how I feel about it, I just feel like it's romantic. It still carries tradition and romance to me, and maybe I'm just that kind of girl."