SIT back on your all-white sofa in your all-white room (maintained at a constant temperature of 26C by two humidifiers and a couple of oscillating fans), grab yourself a handful of plain M&Ms (not peanut), sip a glass of Evian (also room temperature), idly pluck the petals off a dozen yellow roses with red trim, nibble at a bowlful of organic sunflower seeds (husks left on), and try to contain your excitement: Jennifer Lopez is coming to a small screen near you!
Until now, the world's most famous Latina has been best known for being terribly glamorous in some terrible films, being at least as successful in the music world as she is in the movies, and behaving like a complete diva wherever she goes by making
outrageous personal demands (such as those above). But all that might be about to change, because La Lopez will soon be stepping down from the pantheon of movie gods and embracing television in her very own reality series. Jenny from the block is about to become Jenny on the box.
There are so many things I don't understand about this, it's difficult to know where to start. Quite apart from the fact that I doubt JLo has been on more than nodding terms with reality since about 1995, I'm most astonished by the sight of a bona-fide A-lister willingly indulging in what is generally acknowledged to be the exclusive sport of feckless dimwits, certifiable lunatics, desperate Y-listers, has-beens, never-weres and Kerry Katona.
When we watch celebrity reality shows, we're tuning in for a scheduled car crash. The Osbournes, Paris Hilton, Britney and Whitney, Anna Nicole Smith – we want to see people who are successful at failing. We get our kicks from looking at them and thinking: "Great! They've got all that money, some of them are pretty and a few even have a modicum of talent, but are they a complete mess? You bet they are. Yay! I can't tell you how good that makes me feel about myself!"
Somehow I don't see anybody feeling like this after watching the mistress of control herself, Jennifer Lopez. This is a woman so impeccably clued-up about how to live her life to her own agenda that she managed to put off officially announcing her pregnancy until she was practically in the delivery room.
Not only is she a relatively private and restrained personality (as celebrities go), she's also a hard-headed businesswoman who knows how to use her power. Her reported excessive diva demands are only one small way of making other people do what she wants. And it's quite obvious to even the most amateur psychologist that someone who is truly that controlling will never allow a few million strangers to witness the process in action.
Of course, JLo has had a few embarrassing moments in her life, but apart from Gigli, none of them have left any significant trace of evidence. The woman does perfection and she does it, er … really well. She regularly appears on lists of The World's Most Beautiful Women, is married to a handsome and apparently devoted man, and she's just produced adorable twin babies (one boy, one girl – how perfect is that?) without putting an inch on her waist. How is this woman possible? And, perhaps rather more pertinently, who is going to be interested in watching her shiny, happy, ideal life?
Being in a few bad films is not enough to elicit our pity, so she must be expecting us to admire her. But this, unfortunately, is not how reality television works, as anybody who has ever watched it understands.
I certainly can't imagine her willingly feeding the baying hordes with the scraps of misery, ineptitude and dysfunction they've come to crave. This also suggests that Ms Lopez has never watched reality television and is therefore in really big trouble.
Beauty isn't interesting; success isn't particularly interesting; and as everybody who has ever read Hello! knows, happiness is boring as hell. So JLo's wonderful life on camera will probably only last long enough to damage her professional cachet.
Reality television stars screech: "Look at me!" But we're already looking at JLo. To be sure of maintaining her A-list glamour and status she should bow out and leave the undignified scraping about in the barrel-bottom of fame to someone who embodies the real horror of Y-list desperation, who has no style, no brains and way more money than they can sensibly cope with. But even then, I can't imagine who would watch The Heather Mills Show.
The full article contains 781 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
