Jennifer Lopez remembers the moment, decades ago, when her first perfume passed the billion-dollar mark. Glow by JLo—with its curvy, frosted glass bottle, its namesake’s initials dangling from delicate, layered chains—had become the best-selling fragrance in America, and was on track to making $2 billion. Her partners on the project were giddy. But when Lopez heard this news, the reality of her situation snapped into focus. She was being told the sky was the limit, but—
“I’m thinking to myself, Wait a minute,” Lopez says. “I didn’t make but 0.01% of that.”
She reflected on what got her to that point. She was certain her creative vision was what made the perfume popular. She’d decided how it would smell, how it would be marketed. And before any of that, she’d created the cultural platform that made the product possible at all: herself. “I’m here, building this brand on my back—doing these movies, singing these songs, defining myself by my style, by the things that I choose,” she says.
It wasn’t exactly like she’d been tricked, or taken advantage of. She’d welcomed the deal at the time. She’d been grateful for the opportunity, even. “When you start off as an artist, you’re just happy to get whatever you can,” Lopez says. “You can’t believe your good fortune. I remember myself back then: I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll do the perfume! Oh yes, I love fashion, I’ll do a clothing line!’ I’ll do this, I’ll do that. I was just so happy to be here.”
This experience will be recognizable to many people: artists, athletes, immigrants, people without money, people without cultural currency—anyone who begins
