I remember the day I discovered my first girl crush: I must have been 8 or 9 years old, and I had just embarked on a rite of passage that would help to define my teeny-bopping years. I had been to my first Spice Girls concert, and in addition to falling in love with the classics like “Wannabe” and “Say You’ll Be There,” I fell in love with Victoria Adams. Yes, Adams; she was not yet Mrs. Beckham and still had some meat on her bones. These days she won’t even eat a cookie.

I continued to hone in on my celebrity girl crushes, admiring them from afar; I went through a Britney Spears phase (who didn’t?), fell in love with a random contestant on MTV’s Real World/Road Rules Challenge, declared my love for Jessica Alba, Sloan from Entourage, Kristin Cavalleri from Laguna Beach, Charlize Theron, and the entire female cast of Gossip Girl, and obsessed over Giada de Laurentiis from The Food Network. Anyone that can whip up eggplant parmigiana and chocolate hazelnut brownies five days a week and still wear a size two is totally hot in my book.

The one girl (or woman, I should say) that continually I refused to crush on was Penelope Cruz. Maybe it’s because my first serious boyfriend was in love with her and I was jealous, or maybe it’s because she speaks English with a sexy Spanish accent that I have always coveted. Either way, I always argued with people who insisted that she was the hottest celebrity. That is, until I had a revelation just a couple of weeks ago. Read More »