Cruising Along At Forty

UP Beauty Online

          “Cruz has no physical flaws, the bent noses and crooked teeth we would normally use as signifiers. Her face contains no secrets, at least not about her.”

                                                                  - Chris Jones, Esquire                                                        

Penelope Cruz is breathtaking, and besides giving us mere mortals a pang of insecure anxiety and feelings of jealous ire for our vanilla hereditary blood lines and DNA, she can actually offer hope for the aging amongst us. That is, if we can get beyond our own pettiness (I’m trying...J) for long enough to be open to this message of inspiration.

You see, Penelope was just named Esquire’s Sexist Female Alive 2014 and she’s 40 years old. So, where do I mine inspiration from that you ask? Well maybe, just maybe, we can now actually believe that 40 is the new 30, 50 is the new 40, and that 60 is the new 50. No offense to the 70 plus crowd, but I had to cut it off somewhere. Aging with grace and panache may now be a real possibility.

CRUZing along at Forty

As a teenager, Penelope fell in love with producer Pedro Almodóvar, not in the romantic, but in the artistic sense. She would go to his movies alone, after lying as to her age, to take them in and explore them in the grandest of detail. Penelope vividly recalls the day she decided that she must become an actress, wandering out of a movie theatre in Madrid knowing in her soul that she had to succeed, just in order to meet Pedro to tell him how much he inspired her with his work. He is now her great friend and mentor, the director of five of her movies, and still the biggest source of her inspiration.

Now at 40, Cruz is still evolving, growing, and challenging herself as her passion continues to flow forth, and it is apparent even when her image is captured in still shot photographs. You can see it emanating, bubbling behind those steamy, big brown eyes, which turns simple beauty into otherworldly attractiveness – a clear choice for Sexiest Woman Alive, 2014!                 

Look Better, Feel Better, Live Better

It becomes utterly obvious to me through Penelope’s story how an evident external beauty can be exponentially turned up by a focused passion, as well as knowing and living the reason you were put on this earth. Some call it being in the flow, alignment, or synchronicity. I call it simply living your purpose with passion.

There is nothing sexier than someone radiating purpose and passion from their pores, and again, when this focused inner energy is added to one’s outer appearance, we have what some call the “it” or the “X” factor. Charisma, moxy, mojo, personality and confidence are some other ways to possibly describe this phenomenon, but perhaps the best way to illustrate it is to mention two words – Penelope Cruz.

Let’s all strive to find this in our lifetime. What your passion becomes is irrelevant, as we are not saying you need to be a world famous actress with drop dead exotic look to live your purpose and ooze attraction. Just have a plan to be the best that you can be in your own unique role, whatever that is. The world will be a better place for it.

            “I had an attraction to drama. Most of us have that, especially if you are an artist — you feel like you are tempted to explore the darkness. I could not be less interested now. For me, the most attractive, charming, cool, fun, interesting thing — how could I call it? A plan.”   

 - Penelope Cruz

PS: We firmly (no pun intended) believe that inner beauty is paramount; with that being said, if UP Beauty can help you smooth out some cellulite on the exterior, let us know!