TONY DURAN

As for being a role model to millions of young women, Jennifer is direct. “Don’t expect anybody to hand you anything. We have to work for everything in this life,” she says emphatically. “It’s one thing to sit back and say ‘There’s not this and there’s not that for us’. If I would’ve said that, I wouldn’t have gotten to where I’ve gotten. Because it’s true, a lot of those things are true. But be creative; do it yourself. Make it happen; write it, go to school. We need writers. My company, Nuyorican Productions, is all about that. We want to employ Latino actors, we want to employ Latino directors, we want to hire writers who know that world as a Latino writer; that’s important to me and that’s important to my husband, too.”

Now what?

“I read something in the Bible, because I read the Bible a lot, and it has to do with perseverance,” Jennifer says, surprising me for the first time. “I don’t remember everything in the Bible but this quote said, ‘Be happy for your trials because with your trials your faith is tested and when your faith is tested you gain perseverance and when your perseverance is perfect you lack nothing.’ And that is the thing: just keep going. That’s what I would say to everybody, that’s what it’s about. You just keep going.”

Jennifer López leaves the room quietly. I can’t make everyone like her–any star this big has plenty of detractors–but she matters, folks. And don’t forget: she’s ours.