Jennifer Lopez Is Not A Child Molester

When people complain that “women” didn’t get enough attention in this year’s Oscar nominations, we all know they’re just talking about Jennifer Lopez.

This weekend, her completely not-pervy new movie The Boy Next Door opens, and I cannot wait to take the high school senior who lives next door to go see it with me.

It's a movie in the tradition of Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction and, I dunno, other movies where two people engage in an affair involving lots of body fluids and maybe murder (including attempted?) and both mind-fucking and literal fucking. However, in The Boy Next Door, the twist is that one of them is a high school literature teacher and the other is a man who in reality looks 35 but is actually supposed to be 19 but the advertising campaign surrounding this movie wants you to think is an underage child.

How do I know this? Because E! told me:

And to be clear, this is not a movie about a child molester. Again, I just read this morning that the script makes it clear the character is 19, but for a movie that’s been shoved down our throats all month long, that’s information I think the studio held close to the hip for as long as possible. Even worse, it appears that media outlets intentionally used language like “high school student” because, in their minds, this movie was way, way more exciting when you thought the kid was just a kid.

The Boy Next Door in no way engages in a dangerous double standard that, if the roles were reversed (regardless of whether or not said Hot High School Student was a psycho), would be dealt with in a completely different way. Here’s why it’s totally different:

Because She’s Not a Child Molester; She’s a Cougar!

When a headline screams “J. Lo Unleashes Her Inner Cougar,” I know that this movie is about a woman trying to take back her sexual power, not about someone who should probably go to jail. So fun.

Now, you might be thinking this plot line reminds you of those two California teachers who were just arrested, but it’s totally different. They weren’t just unleashing their inner cougars, so their headline is a little different:

While articles promoting The Boy Next Door use language like “seduces,” “sleeps with” and “falls for,” articles about men arrested for “falling for” high school students tend to be a little more liberal with words like “rape,” “molest” and “sexual assault.” So that’s how you tell the difference.

Because Women Can’t Be Child Molesters

Everyone knows that. Just like they know that women really can’t be funny.

Because We’ve All Been There

Preach, Jenny from the Junket:

“You know how that is, her husband's cheated on her. She doesn't know how to deal with it, and is not feeling desirable…And this young man next door - The Boy Next Door - comes along and starts giving her little compliments. She's super vulnerable, and she crosses that line. We all have been there, and for that reason I felt like I understood her.”

Haven’t we all felt vulnerable at some point? And used that vulnerability to molest a child? No? Then have you used that vulnerability to make a movie that required Cosmopolitan to invent the new genre “underage sex thriller”?

(Note: A visit to this article’s page today revealed the title has been changed. So even the very journalist who interviewed the woman who actually wrote the movie didn’t know he’s supposed to be legal.)

They could have had something. Learn from their mistake, and don’t wait another minute to Fandango 1 Adult and 1 Child ticket for Friday night.

Liz Kozak (Editor-in-Chief) once spent a semester teaching high school English. She molested 0% of the students.