As she emerges from the bedroom in a midtown Manhattan hotel, her bare feet scrunch across the carpeting. A large diamond cross gleams at her throat. Alas, she isn’t nude. In fact, her legendarily voluptuous posterior – which is fast becoming an erotic totem up there with Uma Thurman’s lips and Pamela Anderson Lee’s bust – is eclipsed by white terry cloth.

But while choosing to wear a hotel bathrobe for an interview isn’t subtle – are they holding auditions for a White Diamonds ad? - it’s no less than the daring that one expects from a woman who once dissed half the young actresses in Hollywood. And the gambit has its effect. It isn’t until the next day that a stammering reporter finds the courage to ask just what she was wearing under her robe. "Nothing," admits Lopez, staring down her strong, hard nose with big, unabashed eyes. "That’s why I kept adjusting my robe – so you wouldn’t be mortified."

Truth be told, the only thing that would be mortifying on Lopez’s body is burlap. Armed with an aggressive sexiness, not to mention a potent combination of what every diva worth her Versaces must possess – talent, fearlessness, and lip – Lopez, 28, has in the last two years, rocketed from up-and-coming actress to Hollywood’s super-diva of 1998. It’s a description she doesn’t relish. "I have a problem with the term," she says. "I feel like it means that you are mean to people, that you look down on people, and I’m not that type of person."

But make no mistake, Lopez is filling out the title fully, with equal measures of success and controversy. On the career front, she’s broken through as the highest-paid Hispanic actress ever, pullung down $2 million for last summer’s Out of Sights. Says director Gregory Nava, who gave Lopez (whose parents are Puerto Rican) her biggest break in 1997’s Selena, "A big Latina star is just a great point of pride for the whole community."

This year, she also lent her voice to her first animated film, Antz (opening Oct. 2), as Azteca, a comely worker ant, who, quite unlike Lopez, is unquestioningly happy with her lowly place on the bottom rungs of the colony. But Lopez was perfect for the part, says the film’s codirector Eric Darnell, because "She’s got this great combination of control and invulnerability – she came from the Bronx and had to hold her own there – and also a certain sort of sensualness that’s hard to come by."

And in early 1999, if everything goes according to plan, Lopez hopes to enter the true province of divadom: Whitneyland. That’s when Sony Music – the force behind Mariah Carey and Celine Dion – plans to unleash Lopez’s debut album, a mix of ballads and dance tunes, that the company hopes will be the biggest Latin crossover sensation since Gloria Estefan. "It was a no-brainer," says Jeff Ayeroff, copresident of Sony’s Work Group, who decided he wanted to sign Lopez at their first meeting. "I was like, ‘I’m a fish. You’re a hook.’ "

Factor in that Lopez got her start in the biz in 1991 as a Fly Girl in In Living Color – you can also spot her shaking for booty in the video for Janet Jackson’s "That the Way Love Goes" – and the portrait of an acting-singing-dancing triple threat begins to take shape. "I want everything. I want family. I want to do good work. I want love. I want to be comfortable," she says. "I think of people like Cher and Bette Midler and Diana Ross and Barbra Streisand. That’s always been the kind of career I’d hoped to have. I want it all."

Be careful what you wish for. By many accounts in Hollywood, a graceful transition into full-fledged stardom hasn’t been easy for Lopez. Nor for a number of people in her path, who, without much prodding, let fly a slew of adjectives about her. Not a soul describes her as mean, but how about difficult? Shelfabsorbed? And, oh, why not throw in capricious, too? "Yeah, I’m sure they didn’t put it that nicely, either," says Lopez, clearly aware of the sniping that’s out there.

Lopez must also know that she’s partly responsible for her hell-on-wheels reputation. In a now notorious interview with Movieline magazine last February, Lopez sounded off ungenerously about everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow, implying she got ahead by dating Brad Pitt, to Wesley Snipes, whose advances she says she rebuffed while shooting Money Train.

Lopez’s relationship with the media hasn’t improved much since. According to a Universal executive who worked on marketing for Out of Sight, making sure the actress showed up to promote the film was a full-time job. In one instance, the morning after the movie’s New York premiere, Lopez missed a live booking on the Today show by showing up almost an hour late. A Newsweek story never happened after she postponed the interview three times. "People would call up screaming at us, ‘Where the hell is she?’ " says the exec. "Practically every show she did was like that. Everything had to get down to the wire."

The uncomfortable glare on her private life has also left her smarting. Since her split earlier this year from Ojani Noa (the pair married in 1997, after meeting in a Miami restaurant where Noa was a waiter), persistent gossip items have linked her with rap mogul Sean "Puffy" Combs. "That is so dead and tired. We’re just friends," she says, adding that she doesn’t have a boyfriend right now. Nor does she have a publicist, since parting ways with her last one, Karynne Tencer, over the summer. One big Hollywood public-relations agency recently declined to take her on as a client because, according to one employee, "People think she’s hard to handle. Life is too short."

The net effect of these tribulations is that the diva who once roared now keeps her mouth shut as much as possible. "I absolutely watch what I say more," she says. "I make my point, and I don’t say much else." And if at one point her face seems to reveal that she’s hurting from this year of growing pains, she’s not going to open up about that either. "It’s not upsetting," she says, sounding more annoyed than angry. "Who cares? I don’t. I’m just being who I am. I don’t try to be nice. I don’t try to be not nice. I’m not trying to show you I’m a nice perosn either."

So what does Lopez reveal? Watching her is sort of like seeing molten rock churn under pressure. It’s a fascinatingly torturous process. And it could yet produce a diamond. "It’s impossible for people to imagine how overwhelming stardom can be," says Nava. "Everybody that this happens to has a period where they have to learn how to deal with it. Jennifer’s very level-headed, and she’s going to come through all of that with bells on." Adds Out of Sight director Steven Soderbergh, "I’d work with her again in a heartbeat."

And here’s some undeniable proof that Lopez’s place in the Hollywood pantheon is holding firm. Two weeks ago, Lopez – or at least her image – appeared on Will Smith’s 30^th birthday cake, right alongside depictions of Salma Hayek and Scary Spice. So what did the cake say? Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith, had the baker write: "Now you can have a piece."

ON THE DAY FOLLOWING HER INTERVIEW, LOPEZ IS SITTING ON A STOOL wearing a bronze satin bra and pair of almost see-through black pants. A woman is stooped at her feet painting her toenails, while makeup wizard Kevyn Aucoin applies false eyelashes to her lids, readying for her a photo shoot. It’s another entertaining, and uterly innocuous, diva moment. And Lopez is laughing because her music producer is worried about the diminishing size of her butt. A real concern, perhaps, since it’s famous enough to have been the subject of a shout-out on a recent Hollywood Squares. "It’s funny. Now people want me to be a little heavier. I don’t mind," she says. "All the other big-butted women iun the world are happy."

As tracks from her work-in-progress album play in the background – they sound fun and danceable and formidably commercial – Lopez sings along. Her voice – caressing the lyrics of one song, "Could This Be Love?" – is both sweet and strong. Does making a run at becoming a singer scare her? She laughs again. "How can I live my life in fear like that?" she says. "The winners take risks. That’s the only way to be."

Before long, Lopez is even comfortable enough to play at being a diva, in the way that a cat toys with a mouse. After she yells across the studio to her assistant to skip to track No. 11, this reporter asks her which song that is. "The song that I wanted to hear," she cracks. Her life, she admits, is "at an alltime high of tornado-whirlwind-storm right now." So it’s no surprise that later, when she’s asked if she’ll make some more time for the interview, she says: "I’ll try. But I don’t make promises. Maybe that’s the diva in me."

Everywhere you look, divas are in the driver’s seat: big divas, little divas, French-Canadian divas, even interior-decorating divas. This year’s biggest U.S. single is "The Boy Is Mine," a glossy ode to catfighting that’s elevated Brandy and Monica to the diva nation (as has their infamous – if entirely fictitious – backstage catfight at the MTV Awards). VH1’s Divas is the highest-rated program in the channel’s history, spreading diva-liciousness to 15.5 million viewers. On Oct. 6, with operatic occasion, Epic Records is releasing VH1 Divas Live, a five-headed salute to diva-versity starring – in alphabetical order (since, according to In & Out screenwriter and diva aficionado Paul Rudnick, divas must never ranked "or they’ll stop eating!") Aretha, Celine, Gloria, Mariah, and Shania.

There are daytime divas on TV like the indefatigable Oprah Winfrey. Or Barbara Walters, grande dame of The View, that unintentionally irresistible smorgasbord of girl talk. Diva emeritus Diana Ross is developing the movie she was born to make, a new version of the saucy 1981 French film Diva. And, in the interest of equal rights, we should point out that divas don’t always wear décolletage. Watch Charton Heston act. Behold Elton John. And don’t neglect Marylin Manson, currently the No. 1 divo in the land.

Of course, divas have been around for millennia. But they seemed dangerously in decline for most of this decade, overshadowed by a natural enemy: the supermodel. Today, alas, Naomi and Kate are passé, and divas again have the floor. "Is this the biggest group of divas ever?" muses Epic Records diva-like president Polly Anthony. "Let’s just say, if the shoe fits – wear it."

The D word actually dates back to "Casta diva," an 1831 aria from Bellini’s Norma. "It used to mean ‘chaste goddess,’ " explains Wayne Koestenbaum, author of Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon and The Queen’s Throat, academic looks at the diva-deluged subjects of Jackie Onassis and opera. "Today we use it to describe temperament instead of vocal gifts. [I think] the nadir of the term is when somebody like Martha Stewart is called a diva based on her entrepreneurial skills." Or her way with a glue gun.

Koestenbaum’s definition of all things diva include: "exhibitionsm, narcissism, theatricality, neediness, and vocal fireworks of one kind or another." But there’s just one problem with this delineation: A lot of divas are no longer acting entirely like... divas. Classic diva exhibitionism is increasingly rare (Streisand and Jennifer Lopez, aside). In fact, the very meaning of diva is slowly, if reluctantly, di-volving. After all, this is a label that once suggested – in the immortal words of Barbara Bush – something that rhymes with witch. "A lot of the women I work with dislike the term," says Arista Records president Clive Davis, a non-man diva divining rod whose charges have included Janis Barbra, Aretha, Whitney, and Monica. "They hate to be perceived as prima donnas; they think that behavior is beneath them."

Shut yo mouth!

Sugar

Is that a (fill in the blank) in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?

Hello, gooorgeous!

Are you hatin’ on me?

As God as my witness, I’ll never go hungry again.

I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. De Mille.

In the old days, you could count on a proper diva to throw the occasional grand-mal tantrum, to perform the estrogenic equivalent of the trashed hotel room, to take the hissy fit where no man had gone before. Highlights in a brief history of divatude include: Eve and the pesky apple; Delilah and her thing with hair; Mae West chewing her way through men like a shark swimming through chum; Joan Crawford and her famous wire hangers; Aretha Franklin banning air-conditioning during her rehearsals; Diana Ross forbidding eye contact from her roadies; Barbra Streisand giving a warbrobe credit to "Ms. Streisand’s closet" in a Star Is Born.

"The classic diva were powerful women who didn’t need business suits," says a wistful Rudnick. "They had authority combined with emotion. They were feminists in sequins."

The current crop of divas is tough, self-assured, still powerful, and, in a throwback to the diva of yore, just a tiny bit self-aggrandizing. Yes, they have their peccadilloes. Jennifer Love Hewitt likes to be called Love. Sarah Michelle Gellar and her Buffy: The Vampire Slayer alter ego are always complaining about needing more time off. And Gillian Anderson maintains an auro of sulkiness even though she’s got an Emmy and a new salary commensurate with
co-diva David Duchovny. But for the most part, these women have elevated diva to respectability. The modern-day diva is less about behaving badly and more about getting the job done (with a dash of the grandiose). And a good first name obviously helps.

There’s only one problem. Without the barn-burning behavior, how do we know who’s really a diva and who’s not? "These women do not get in their own way," says Saturday Night Live’s Ana Gasteyer, best known for her dead-on Celine Dion impression. "They’re still divas, if only because they feel total entitlement to the mythologies surrounding them – they’re completely enthralled by their hype. There are no apologies. They just make things happen."

"A real diva transcends any moment," adds Arista’s Davis. "Their talent is larger than life; it refuses to fade. Janis had a life force that could kick you across a room; I’ve been with Whitney for 18 years, and she still knocks my socks off. Every day with Aretha, I feel like I’m part of history."

History – respectful, no doubt, of those delicate eating habits – has yet to select which of today’s current divas are most likely to join the pantheon. But before we rush to vote, Koestenbaum offers the following ominous caveat: "It may sound like a compliment to be called a goddess, but it’s not a cuddly term. Diva implies a certain remoteness. It doesn’t say ‘I wanna hold your hand.’ Divas are lonely and unapproachable." Add loneliness and exile to exhibitionism, narcissism, theatricality, and neediness, and history may have no choice but to elect to White House the new capitol of divadom.

"Hmmm, I don’t know about [them]," says Gasteyer. "I’d call Monica a hapless celebrity. That’s different. Real divas are born that way. Come hell or high water, they’re gonna be stars. And it doesn’t fade, either. That’s the great thing about Elizabeth Taylor. Now she’s a diva. And it doesn’t matter if she never works again. She’ll always be fabulous." And that’s without a Cohiba.

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