The Body & Soul of Jessica Alba

What is it about Jessica that makes u obsessed about her? Of course she's beautiful. But is there something else?? Maybe it's a magical curse. I dunno. Would I have been better off not knowing she existed so she wouldn't be on my mind so much?
--from one of the hundreds of Alba fan sites

"I got plenty of ass."

Jessica Alba is hiking in Hollywood's Runyon Canyon with one hand gripping her left cheek. She is talking about her body. The body. Hers of the mesmerizing torso showcased to full, undulating perfection in several films, most recently Sin City and in this month's summer opus Fantastic Four, and bested only by the aforementioned ass, a heart-shaped beauty that sends men into fits of sputtering praise, but an ass that Alba nonetheless believes is a tad too large.

"I hear people in this industry talking shit all the time about how Jennifer Lopez is fat," she says tersely. "And I know if they're calling her fat, they're saying the same shit about me."

Rightly, Alba worries about this. At twenty-four, she has, thus far in her acting career, been largely defined by her body. Of her last eight films, she has been nearly naked in seven. She is five feet six and a half, 34-25-34, and weighs 120 pounds, depending upon her training schedule. But the numbers tell little of the story. Even beneath the baggy sweats she favors, Alba's body is a marvel of feminine proportion. A siren song. Everything slopes and curves where it should. Nothing juts or strains. Muscles blend into soft arcs.

As a result, Alba has consistently been ranked in the top ten on various men's-magazine fuckability polls. Web sites devoted to her celebrity hammer on her hotness with creepy persistence. Mark Wahlberg's reality-infused HBO show Entourage devoted an entire story arc to the conquest of Alba, her body hounded like the Holy Grail of scores by the young male cast, a quest Wahlberg himself has supposedly pursued in real life. Us Weekly even reported the rumor that Alba was Tom Cruise's first choice for a publicity girlfriend -- the plum position ultimately handed over to default pick Katie Holmes. The thinking: Alba's carnal appeal is so powerful it could endear Mr. Cruise to a youth audience and affirm his virility once and for all.