"Whether or not to take a spouse’s name is a personal decision. But the personal is political — now more than ever, and especially for celebrities."

"Like every star, or every mortal with an Instagram account, Ms. Affleck has constructed a persona for public consumption. She has used her platforms to tell the tale of the upward trajectory of a strong, independent woman, a woman who has gone from backup dancer to global superstar. Her brand is intense competence and hard-core self-sufficiency — 'in control and loving it,' as she sings in 'Jenny From the Block.' Whoever Jennifer Affleck is in her private life, J. Lo is a woman who might love a man but doesn’t need one. Imagine if, in her newsletter, she had said, 'I love my husband. Right now, though, women are under attack, and I won’t participate in a tradition that’s historically rooted in women relinquishing their identities and their legal standing. I’m giving my husband my heart, but I’m keeping my name.' Imagine if Ben Affleck had become Ben Lopez."

I'm reading "Why It Matters That J-Lo Is Now J-Aff" by Jennifer Weiner (NYT). 

Garnering fans.

View this post on Instagram

Working for @savethechildren has its benefits ☺️🤩...turns out Arkansas kids are 🌟❤️🌞, too. #DONTFOLLOWME #savethechildrenplusheadstart #investinkids

A post shared by Jennifer Garner (@jennifer.garner) on Oct 19, 2018 at 10:13am PDT

What Ben Affleck said about marriage at the Oscars and why people are criticizing him.

Accepting the award for Best Picture, he said (addressing his wife):

"I want to thank you for working on our marriage for 10 Christmases. It’s good, it is work, but it’s the best kind of work, and there’s no one I’d rather work with."

What's wrong with that?

The criticism centers around this statement as lacking in cuteness, and focusing on the negative. It wasn’t the “right forum” for this type of declaration, it was a possible indicator that “something is wrong” in the marriage, he should have just stuck to “I love you and adore you and you’re perfect” -- basically whining that a major Hollywood star was uncomfortably honest about his relationship and said overly blunt things about marriage in one of the most public forums on the planet.

Obviously, that's a summary from someone who doesn't agree with the criticism.

The critics are imagining themselves in the position of the wife and thinking they'd want to hear a nice compliment. But I bet Affleck planned his speech, with the help of his wife Jennifer Garner, and that the 2 of them decided they had an excellent opportunity to speak to everyone about marriage and this was the message they wanted to give: Work on it everyone. We — the pretty people, who seem so ideal — we have to work on it and we do work on it.

The line is crafted. 10 years was edited into 10 Christmases. It's been years and it's included family traditions and deep values that take a lot of attention. The first sentence creates some tension. Is he saying that the wife took care of the home front, making his life stable and pleasurable, while he went out in the world and furthered his career? The second sentence prolongs the tension — It’s good, it is work, but it’s the best kind of work — and we finally get to the resolution: there’s no one I’d rather work with. That means he is also doing this work. And that's subtly stated. He didn't praise himself as he said those last few words which reveal that he is a partner in the work. It's all carefully about her.

Well, there's also the "no one" — the nonexistent person he would prefer to "work with," that is, to have a marriage with, because it's marriage that equals work. The temptation of adultery is that it looks like a vacation from a marriage that seems like work. Imagine the opportunities strewn in front of Ben Affleck. There's a twist on that last line that creates anxiety for the sensitive listener: There's no one other than Jennifer that he'd like to work with (be in a marriage with), but does he ever play?

The dreadful Oscars show. The Oscars show was even duller than the SAG Awards. Was there even a single surprise? Billy Crystal's return reminded me of some of the sad returns Lucille Ball made to TV in her waning years: she was doing the same sorts of things that used to be so funny, but now it just seemed wrong for her to strain herself to do it. Crystal seemed to want to throw out lines about current movie happenings, but how much comic traction can you really get out of "The Passion of the Christ"? Everyone seemed afraid of offending, as if they were all massively overshadowed by Janet Jackson's epic breast. Only Errol Morris said anything with any political sting, and his speech revealed that his true outrage really lay more in the area of the way the Academy has been slighting him all these years. (Of course, he was right about that, but it wasn't all that lovely for him to be the one saying it.) Tim Robbins restricted his politics to concern about child abuse, and Sean Penn only made an oblique reference to WMD. Nearly everyone just thanked people endlessly, tediously. Then more time had to be wasted, lamely, by having Jack Black and Will Ferrell sing about how the thank you speeches are boring. And, oh, the songs, those songs-non-songs that extend the already horrible longueurs of the show's midsection.

I had to read about Sean Penn's statement, because I bailed out before he appeared, somewhere in the show's fourth hour, when I calculated all the awards that had yet to be given, and how long I would need to wait for the big four awards. The show was quite simply torture--impossibility of making "The Passion" quips noted--the least entertaining Oscars show in memory. I enjoyed some of the early red carpet stuff: Jennifer Garner had a lovely tangerine dress and Renee Zellweger looked painfully swaddled in white cardboardish cloth. But it was pretty much downhill from there.