By Roxanne "Flashbulb" Starr
Let's be clear from the jump: Jennifer Lopez was not arrested in Minnesota. But you wouldn't know that from the corner of the internet currently losing its mind over a mugshot making the rounds this week.
According to Fox News, a Minnesota woman's booking photo has gone viral after social media users spotted what they're calling a striking resemblance to the 56-year-old singer and actress. The comparisons have spread fast, with users sharing the mugshot alongside glamour shots of Lopez and marveling at the likeness — cheekbones, hair, the works.
Here's what I can tell you, and what I can't. Fox News reports the resemblance sparked the viral moment; it does not identify the woman by name in the reporting available to us, nor does it detail the charge that landed her in the booking photo in the first place. That's a gap, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Until there's a name, a charge and a source who'll put it on the record, I'm treating this as what it plainly is: an internet doppelgänger story, not a Jennifer Lopez story. Lopez herself has not commented, and there's no indication she's aware of the comparison.
Doppelgänger mugshots are a genre unto themselves online — the internet loves finding celebrity faces in unlikely places, from courtroom sketches to grocery store security cam stills. Most burn bright for a day and vanish. This one's got legs mostly because Lopez is, well, Lopez: one of the most photographed faces on the planet, which makes any lookalike an instant conversation piece.
We'll update if the woman's identity, charges or her own reaction surface through a verifiable source. Until then: striking photo, unconfirmed story. If I can't source it, you won't read it here.
— Compiled from reporting by Fox News.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."