Jennifer Lopez: Who Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant?
Jennifer Lopez is amazed people were surprised when she finally unleashed the big secret and announced she was pregnant.
“I kind of feel like everybody knew anyway,” the singer tells Harper’s Bazaar for its February issue. “I was on tour with a bubble gut!”
In Los Angeles one balmy evening, Jennifer Lopez came home after spending the day recording her Spanish-language album, Como Ama Una Mujer. “I’d just come from the studio with this long caftan on, no makeup, but I had all my diamonds and some wood jewelry,” she remembers. “A weird mix of earth and glamour.” Jennifer happened to have a visitor: Catherine Walsh, a senior vice president at Coty Prestige. Walsh loved Jennifer’s look that day, and the two started brainstorming. They discussed her earthy but opulent style, played in her jewelry box (for the record, she has an entire drawer devoted to yellow diamonds), and wound up in the French-provincial garden at the back of her home. “There’s this smell in my garden,” Jennifer explains. “The wood of the stairs wet with water, the lemon trees, rosemary and lavender, and five different types of roses. The combination of these smells was the inspiration for the fragrance.”
The fragrance is Deseo, Jennifer’s eighth scent with Coty, one that comes six years after her landmark Glow became one of the most successful fragrance launches in history. Today Jennifer has taken over the sweeping penthouse suite of a midtown New York hotel, and the air is infused with Deseo’s fresh floral and musky notes. She is nestled into a plush L-shaped banquette, her round belly filling out an elegant gray Yves Saint Laurent dress. Her hair is a blonde-streaked caramel, while her eyes seem positively backlit. The very pregnant Jennifer is literally glowing.
Jennifer is involved in every aspect of her empire, and Deseo (Spanish for desire) is no exception. She refused to green-light it until she felt it truly reflected her current, more intimate stage of life. “Being an artist is about baring your soul,” she explains. “If you’re not doing that, you’re not creating anything that’s worth anything. I always see myself as a performer first, so I will always want to make music, act in movies, even onstage,” she says, then nods toward the Deseo bottle. “I’ve been lucky that because of what I do as a performer, I’ve also been able to do stuff like fragrances that I love. I’ll never look at it as a money thing. I’ll always look at it as a creative outlet.”
The bottle, designed to resemble raw blue and yellow diamonds pulled straight from the earth, glimmers conspicuously amid huge bouquets of tropical flowers and many small plates of pastries. From the selection in front of her, it would seem she is a fan of chocolate. “That is so good,” she says, digging into a dark, moussey confection. She puts the spoon down after a bite or two and picks up a pumpkin cake, sighing, and says, “But I can’t have too much chocolate.” Because of the caffeine? “Uh-hmm,” she sidesteps with a knowing smile.
See, Jennifer, 38, has learned a thing or two in her more than two decades in the entertainment business. In her rise from background dancer to megastar and mogul, she has experienced everything from spectacular career successes (more than 35 million albums sold, 16 starring movie roles that have generated more than $600 million at the box office, two lines of clothing, seven successful fragrances) to tabloid notoriety for her high-profile romantic relationships.
But her private life is now off-limits - particularly when it comes to the upcoming addition to her family. “I do realize people want to know because they’re interested, but this is the first time I’m going through this,” Jennifer says. “This is my experience and my husband’s experience, and we get to hold that for a little while.” Then she grins, sneaking one more spoonful of chocolate mousse. “We’re just getting used to the fact that we’ve told everybody. I kind of feel like everybody knew anyway,” she laughs. “I was on tour with a bubble gut!”
So what happened to the Jennifer Lopez of the legendary red-carpet unveilings (the eye-popping down-to-there dresses, the bold-name boyfriends)? “I’m just feeling too protective to open that door right now,” Jennifer replies, surreptitiously rubbing her belly. “It’s a Pandora’s box. It’s a destructive lifestyle to be out there. I know because I’ve lived it. Being on the cover of the tabloids every day for two years - it’s hard. You start forgetting who you really are inside.”
Her husband of three years, Marc Anthony, has also influenced her view of celebrity. “Marc is a really private person, and he’s been singing onstage since he was really young. He made me realize you can be an artist, and have credibility and success, without your life being on public display 24 hours a day.” Marc and Jennifer have no desire to subject their offspring to the paparazzi gauntlet anytime soon. “[Our baby] will be whatever we are,” Jennifer maintains, squirming at the very thought of her child hitting the red carpet. “Private when it comes to that stuff.”
Marc has, of late, become Jennifer’s creative partner as well as her romantic one. He was a producer on Como Ama Una Mujer; the pair also costarred in 2007’s El Cantante and headlined the 16-city En Concierto tour last fall. Given that Jennifer completed the grueling tour while pregnant, how much time is she really going to take off? Her answer is joyfully weary: “I don’t know - and I like that, because my life has been so planned for so many years. Once I did the tour, I really just wanted to shut it down, and since then I’ve had to do three things, including a video. It may not sound like a lot, but you know, at this point, any woman can sympathize. It is a lot. I was ready to just sit.”
But Jennifer never sits still for long. Rising gracefully from the banquette, she reveals a killer pair of stageworthy six-inch stilettos. Even if she takes a long turn out of the limelight, Jennifer Lopez will be back.
