Jessica Alba kicked off 2024 the best possible way: With an intense cardio session that left her drenched in sweat and feeling incredible. Alba, 42, shared a video of herself wearing a black two-piece workout outfit, while taking part in an online SoulCycle spin class. "Morning sweat 💦 Kicking off the new year 💪🏽 #WellnessWednesday," she captioned the post. Alba has never felt more secure in her skin, and it shows—here's how her approach to happiness, aging, and confidence has changed in her 40s.
Alba started her clean-living The Honest Company after developing concerns about possibly toxic ingredients found in everyday items. "I really felt like I needed to create a company that stood for the values that I had as a person, and I just found there really wasn't one company out there that was meeting my needs," she tells Who What Wear. "When you look at the chemicals that are in all of the different products we use—everything from cleaning products to bath, body, beauty, and baby products—you can't point to just one product having an adverse effect on your health. It's all the products in combination that you're being exposed to every day over a period of time."
As a producer, Alba is proud to use her influence to create more diverse roles and characters for women of color. "I did not have a ton of examples of diverse beauty icons," she tells Elle. "I liked the '90s supermodels, probably because of Azzedine Alaïa and his influence on beauty and pop culture—he celebrated brown skin, big lips, big boobs, and big butts, and was celebratory of Black and brown beauty and mixed people. But in entertainment, in Hollywood, it was very Caucasian. When I was coming up, there were iconic beauties like Salma [Hayek], Jennifer Lopez, and Selena. And I love old Hollywood femme fatale and glamor icons like Rita Hayworth, Sofia Loren, Lauren Bacall, Lupe Velez, Brigitte Bardot, Veronica Lake, and Catherine Deneuve. But as a young actress, I aspired to redefine 'the girl next door' and felt like Hollywood wasn't capturing it."
Alba swears by collagen and prenatal vitamins. "Definitely consult your doctor, but I do think taking a high-quality DHA is really helpful, and I am an advocate for probiotics and having a good multivitamin on hand," she tells Who What Wear. "I also love prenatals. They're packed with all kinds of vitamins to help grow a baby, and any time I've taken them, whether I was pregnant or not or trying to get pregnant or not, I've found that everything just looks more glowy and vibrant. I also like to put collagen in my coffee in the morning, or I'll use a protein powder with collagen if I'm making a smoothie."
Alba embraces the changes and wisdom that come with age. "When I was younger, I was always in my head, and I was so insecure," she tells Who What Wear. "I was worried about such silly things that, at the end of the day, mean absolutely nothing. I wasn't living in the moment. I didn't have the same quality of life when I was younger as I do now. I had more collagen and fluffier cheeks and no pores, and my cellulite wasn't as dominant… I didn't have stretch marks on my boobs, and yet I was still so insecure about every little thing, you know? I never just enjoyed and lived in the moment, and now, it's just like whatever! Let me live!"
Alba is thriving in her 40s, especially as she has learned to stop caring about negative opinions as she gets older. "And then it starts going into the negative zone," she tells Elle. "You start giving less and less with each year that goes by, which is the blessing of age. I started giving less [care] in my thirties. In my forties, zero. None. It's done. We're done with that, sis."
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