Jennifer Lopezis opening up about being a proud Latina.
In an exclusive clip shared with PEOPLE ahead of Tuesday’s installment ofToday, Lopez, 53, speaks with NBC News' Morgan Radford about embracing her culture and physique, stating, “This is my body.”
Radford notes that Lopez refused to let others “pigeonhole” her into being anything other than her true self.
“It’s just who I was,” Lopez says, adding that when she was younger, her parents encouraged her to “be proud of who I was.”
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“And so when I went into these worlds, like Hollywood, where we were not represented at all, I almost felt like a unicorn. ‘I’m Latina. I’mJennifer Lopezfrom the Bronx. And my parents are Puerto Rican, I’m Puerto Rican.’ And I think it made me feel special.”
Lopez also recalls loving her body despite not seeing many other women who looked like her.
“Even the whole body thing was such a thing. It was like, everybody was like size zero models, tall, blonde — beautiful, a certain type of beauty — but there was other types of beauty that I grew up with.”
At the time, theMarry Meactress told PEOPLE, " ‘Beauty has no expiration date’ was always my personal mantra because I’m in a business where youth is glorified and people try to write, especially women, off at a certain time."
She added, “It’s like, ‘Oh, you’re done no more movies for you. We don’t want your music anymore.’ Growing up, I looked up to people like Diana Ross and Cher and Tina Turner, and they were in their 50s and they were beautiful and almost coming into their own at that time.”
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Someone who thinks she looks good thenandnow is her husbandBen Affleck, 50. “He is like, ‘I like you when you have nothing on. No hair on, no makeup on, just you in your own skin,” she said.
“He really appreciates that. And that makes me feel really confident and beautiful. Someone can see the essence of who you are and just the skin that you’re in and that I take care of that and that he appreciates that. That makes me feel really beautiful too.”
See more of Lopez’s interview on Tuesday’s episode ofToday.
source: people.com
