Yikes. Jennifer Lopez is the cover girl for InStyle’s enormous September issue, which also happens to be the magazine’s 15th anniversary issue. I do not care for any part of the styling of this cover. The Jil Sander dress is strange – yes, it makes Jennifer look thin, and yet the faux-space-age design doesn’t really compliment her curvy body. Also, Jennifer’s hair and make-up is horrible. Her hair looks like it’s pulled too tight, and now all I can see is Jennifer’s little elf-like ears. And is it just me, or does Jennifer’s skin look artificially lightened too? Her natural skin tone is about two shades up.

People Magazine has some of the early quotes from the cover interview. Mostly, Jennifer talks about her life as a wife and mother, and how much having twins Emme and Max has changed her. Jenny pays some lip service to caring more about her kids than she cares about herself, which I’m not sure I buy. I like that J.Lo has toned it down the past few years, but I still see the diva glint in her eye. She wants to be über-famous again.

Jennifer Lopez may look the same as she always has, but the star says she’s been transformed since becoming a mother to her twins, 18-month-old Max and Emme.

“There’s nothing as huge as giving birth to another human being and having to be responsible for another life,” Lopez tells InStyle, for its September, 15th-Anniversary issue. “There’s you before kids, and there’s you after kids – and they’re not the same you.”

The singer-actress, who celebrated turning 40 with a blowout bash in July, says her outlook on all aspects of life – from her music to relationships and business ventures – has shifted gears.

“[Parenthood] totally changes your perspective on everything,” says Lopez. “You don’t come first anymore. There’s somebody else you care more about than yourself.”

For the active entrepreneur, that means cutting down on work and stepping down from the “hamster wheel,” a previous lifestyle that was all about deadlines – a whirl in which she “felt like I couldn’t say no.”

“I’m at a point in my life when I just don’t feel the need to put out anything unless I totally, absolutely feel it says what I want to say,” Lopez says about her music career. She has, however, received inspiration from her twins – especially Max, whose first few steps inspired the proud mom to write a song.

When it comes to marriage, Lopez, who’s been wed to Marc Anthony for five years, admits she’s “still figuring it out as I go along,” and she’s had her share of “hard experiences and a lot of ups and downs and a lot of mistakes.”

One way she’s figuring it all out is by reading books about relationships. “It’s the never-ending question – what is the key to love?”

As for what she’s gleaned, “I believe that in life you learn through experience,” she says. “I’m old enough to know now that relationships take work. That’s it’s not an easy thing.”

[From People]

The part where she talks about marriage being difficult, and taking work does ring true – I think she and Marc have their struggles as a couple. But I also think that when they disagree, Marc just stops what he’s doing and does whatever Jennifer wants him to do.

Jennifer just finished filming The Back-Up Plan, which is a film about a woman who hits forty and decides to have a baby on her own, so she goes in and gets artificially inseminated. Of course, right after she knocks herself up, she meets the man of her dreams, and everyone lives happily ever after. Oops, was that a spoiler? Don’t worry – you’ll be able to see a different version of the movie starring Jennifer Aniston, called The Baster, which will come out first. Too bad for J.Lo – this is her first film in four years.

Header image of InStyle cover thanks to JustJared