Eva Mendes shares the self-love lessons she is teaching her kids: ‘I am trying to educate them about what we eat and what we put into our bodies’
Eva Mendes is championing a boring girl summer.
In a recent interview with Byrdie, Mendes, 48, shared why she is leaning into the mundane after a few months abroad.
"When we were in London, we went from musical to musical taking advantage of being back in the theater, we went to all kinds of museums, we went to Windsor Castle — I had a ton of field trips planned for them, which we did. And now I feel like it's time to bring boredom back," she said.
While many people lean away from stagnation, Mendes has a different approach to slowing down.
"I really feel like when we're bored — not stimulated by a phone, or an iPad or computer or television — that's when ideas come in. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's dangerous and sometimes it's enlightening. I really want it to be the summer of boredom," she said.
In addition to boredom, Mendes finds solace in keeping a clean space, something she views as an indicator of her mental health.
"It's always been part of my thing because for me, a clean house equals mental wellness. I just knew growing up in a really tiny apartment with very little, when my mom would clean on the weekends, and she'd wake me up with Cuban music and the house smelled so good, I just felt happier. We all did. We all did, even though it was tiny. We were just all like, "Oh, this feels so nice." And then when it became a mess again, it reflected that things were hard. It was symbolic of how we were doing as a family visually. So for me, cleaning equals mental wellness," she said.
For her physical wellness, Mendes tries to keep things pretty clean there too.
"I take care of my skin from the inside out by controlling what I eat, what supplements I take, my water intake," said Mendes, who admits she does lean on beauty gadgets to do what diet can't. "And then of course, taking advantage of technology — because I wasn't going in for any kind of radiofrequency treatments and stuff like that when I was even in my 30s!"
She hopes to pass her affinity for beauty from the inside out onto her children, 7-year-old Esmeralda and 6-year-old Amanda.
"I am trying to educate them about what we eat and what we put into our bodies, and how that manifests itself physically, whether it's how we look or how we feel," she said.
But more than anything, Mendes wants her daughters to fill up on self-love.
"Hopefully Ryan and I are doing the work by just loving them, completely loving them, and doing most of that work for them so that they grow up feeling like they're enough," she said.
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