Compared with the tabloid monster that was Bennifer in the aughts, Bennifer 2.0 has been a relatively low-key affair, and that held true when the pair finally tied the knot over the weekend. Unlike the huge ceremony the couple planned in 2003 before they called it off, they went for a small, quickie wedding in Vegas. But one detail about the marriage sticks out as decidedly not low-key—perhaps, in fact, as a bit high-key: Jennifer Lopez is taking Ben Affleck’s last name.
News of the name change reached the masses when Lopez, or rather, the artist formerly known as Lopez (?), sent out an edition of her email newsletter with details about the wedding on Sunday evening and signed it, “With love, Mrs. Jennifer Lynn Affleck.” Like she was just gonna slip that one past us without talking about it!
It’s a surprising move for an international superstar whose name and nickname are so famous that her aforementioned newsletter is actually called On the JLo. It seems unlikely that she’ll change her newsletter’s name or start using the “Jennifer Affleck” name professionally, nor will fans stop calling her Jennifer Lopez or J.Lo, the way everyone still uses the names Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle. Instead, the name change seems largely symbolic, especially when considered alongside a video from 2003 that resurfaced around the wedding news wherein Lopez tells Access Hollywood’s Pat O’Brien that her married name “will be Jennifer Affleck, obviously.” This is Lopez’s fourth marriage, and it’s unclear whether she changed her name privately for previous marriages, though I don’t recall any messages to fans that announced the new “Jennifer Anthony” back in 2004.
Still, the idea of someone as accomplished as Jennifer Lopez changing her name struck some fans and commentators as a bit retro, even as it remains a very popular practice: Some 70 percent of U.S. women opt to take their husbands’ names when getting married. It would feel almost equally retro to publicly criticize a woman for deciding to take her husband’s name. This was nobody’s choice but Lopez’s, and if she wants to try to make J.Aff happen, by God, she should get to. But thinking about the merits of Jennifer Lopez vs. Jennifer Affleck does raise a tantalizing third possibility—one that, in an alternate reality, I would have loved to see come to fruition: Ben Lopez.
Think about it. How fun would that have been? Any couple could go with the wife’s name just for the hell of it, but it would be particularly befitting Lopez and Affleck’s pre-existing public personas: She is a world-famous triple threat. His achievements as an actor and director (making him a double threat, which is one less than triple, for anyone counting) have often been overshadowed by his personal narrative, which has included a high-profile divorce, struggles with addiction, and endless paparazzi photos of his romantic entanglements. She, too, is divorced and has been in high-profile relationships, but somehow she never comes off as quite as divorced as him, despite being literally three times more divorced. Personally and professionally, she runs a tight ship. This is not to say that a married couple’s last name should be determined by who has the most talents, but shouldn’t this all count for something? The first time the two were together, it was suggested that Affleck felt emasculated by all the attention their relationship was getting. To embrace life as Ben Lopez, wife guy, as he’s already started to do publicly, would be a powerful way to signal to the world that the new Mr. Lopez is secure enough not to worry about such things. He could take a page out of second gentleman Douglas Emhoff’s book and very publicly commit to taking a backseat to her. He would instantly become the most enlightened guy at any Dunkin’.
This would also only cement Affleck’s ongoing rebrand. When he and Lopez rekindled their romance last year, he was just coming off a string of failed relationships, including, most recently, with actress Ana de Armas, and a not-so-celebrated run in his career, not to mention that one photo of him staring plaintively at the ocean with the sad phoenix back tattoo. Since getting together with J.Lo, he’s been looking good—a man on the mend. Why not own it?
Besides, Affleck famously speaks Spanish. He famously loves Jennifer Lopez. Something tells me he would get a kick out of going by Ben Lopez. Maybe it would be in a self-congratulatory way that kind of undermines the whole project of using Lopez’s last name, but even so! And there would be a new nickname in it for him to boot: B.Lo. Appropriate for the man that puts his wife above him, no?
Alas, this is all a pipe dream now. I’m happy for Jennifer Lynn Affleck (and for Ben Affleck too), but I can’t help but long for what might have been.
