jewel eye

Ten years ago this June, Jennifer Lopez (who is 40 today!) released On the 6. It was the summer before we (our generationally uniform A&P staff) started high school. And it was the last of some wine, at once blissful and terribly depressing/ive. I was becoming aware of finite-ness (the finite-ness of any mini-epoch, any happy afternoon, any--oy--childhood?). I went to Venice with my grandmother. I went to a house in New Mexico with my parents and sister. I listened to On the 6 throughout. Pillow and I had a mutual love for the record, forged while staying up all night listening to it in her cedar closet, getting high on pure conjecture: video images, foggy notions of adulthood, choreographed dances, stretchy and flared denims, inside jokes about the less attractive members of boy bands.

There's not so much to say about the music. I loved it then because I was 14. I love it now because I'm sentimental. But the album cover. As far as I'm concerned, gold hot pants, beige chasmere sweater, and ponytail really add up. J. Lo is most iconic as a beauty, a dresser, as a glam caricature (and a Nueva Yorker), as the demander of culticle oils and fresh-cut flowers. Her musical and filmic successes, whatever they've been, are directly linked to her personal excesses (and thank G-d!). The two favorites from Summer '99: