EQUAL PAY FOR JENNIFER LOPEZ!

A working class hero is something to be. And then there's Jennifer Lopez...

As well as a helicopter ‘on stand-by’, Jennifer insisted on a custom-fitted speed boat – complete with love seat, faux leather seats and a champagne fridge – oh, and a pair of $5,000 diamond-encrusted headphones to keep the noise of the boat’s motor down,” The Mirror, May 2010.

IT WAS INTERESTING TO observe the behaviour of that well known political activist Jennifer Lopez (estimated worth: $315 million) at this year's Oscar awards ceremony.

She loudly applauded the call from actor Patricia Arquette for equal pay for women. But it is hard not to imagine that Lopez, whose extravagant demands are notorious, was thinking more about how it would help  inflate her already bloated bank balance rather than meet the concerns of her working class sisters.

She might claim she is 'Jenny from the block' in her songs but, in reality, she's only from the block if the block happens to be a luxury hotel apartment complex in Manhattan.

Last year, a much hyped free concert in the Bronx turned into a PR disaster for Lopez when she chose to stay in a luxury apartment in Chelsea, Manhattan, well away from the working class suburb where she grew up.

Many Bronx residents chose to boycott the free concert. The venue, which Lopez had expected to be full, was half empty for her stage show.

"She’s been making all this money on [the Bronx] but she doesn’t even help out the neighborhood,” said one resident.

Another resident said: “I don’t think she’s done enough for the community….[Locals] feel like she’s a sellout and she took too long to come back.”

Lopez has only used her Bronx roots when it has aided her career and, over the years, she's failed to show any kind of support for the working class community she sings about.

Parading her 'support' for equal pay for women might look good for Lopez on a show that is watched worldwide but that's as far as it will go. Don't expect Lopez to join the struggle anytime soon.