50something woman leaves the house without makeup shocker!

Is Pamela Anderson going "makeup-free" the start of something – or just fashion?

Pamela Anderson at the Isabel Marant show in Paris

Earlier this week a 56-year-old woman left the house without makeup and the internet - as it is wont to do - had a meltdown. 

No, it wasn’t me. Strangely this doesn’t happen when I go outside with nothing to protect the innocent viewing public from my unadorned face other than dark glasses and a lot of hair, as I do most days. But then I’m not Pamela Anderson and she wasn’t picking up a coffee at her local Caffè Nero, she was attending French designer Isabel Marant’s show at Paris Fashion Week.

“Pamela Anderson goes makeup-free at Paris Fashion week!” screamed countless headlines. “Pamela Anderson, 56, looks completely different as the Baywatch star ditches her makeup.” screamed more.

Woman without makeup looks different from the same woman with makeup! Who knew?!

Jamie Lee Curtis, arguably queen of the “look your age and fuck it” brigade, lost it on Instagram: “In the middle of fashion week with so many pressures and postures, and and and, this woman showed up and claimed her seat at the table with nothing on her face. I am so impressed and floored by this act of courage and rebellion,” she wrote. (You can imagine her typing that in a frenzy, like that manic typing cat gif, and that’s just one of the reasons I love her.)

Seriously though. I don’t think it’s quite that brave, is it? And if it is, it certainly shouldn’t be. Not in 2023 when… oh, right. Anyway, leaving the house while female and makeup-free is hardly brave in the true sense of the word at any age. But rebellious, maybe. Especially if the world is endlessly scrutinising you, as they usually are Pamela Anderson.

But more than the fuss about the lack of makeup, what’s bemused me most is the palaver about it taking even more chutzpah when you’re on the wrong side of 50? 

The thing is, until I was in my early 50s, it simply wouldn’t have occurred to me to leave the house without makeup, especially not in a professional capacity. OK so I had a job where stupidly high heels and a blow dry seemed to be part of the deal. (I know.) But it wasn’t just that. Much as I’d like to blame my endless procession of double-standard-wielding misogynist bosses, I have to admit I’d been obsessed with makeup, particularly eye makeup, since I was old enough to wear it, and before. From the minute mascara and eyeliner entered my life (and my pencil case), I couldn’t imagine life without it. Spidery lashes and kohl layered thickly and inexpertly around my non-existent eyes (I’m ginger, fair lashes, fair brows, pale blue eyes) became my go-to and when Bob Finbow said (well, yelled) that I looked like I panda in year nine (that’s 8th grade, US subscribers) I took it as a compliment, even though it most certainly wasn’t meant as one, and clung to it.

And that is how “smoky eyes” became my “look”. Not exactly scientific. Or remotely well-informed unless you count Jackie magazine.

For decades, mascara would have been my desert island beauty product even above SPF. That’s how obsessed I was.

But all that changed with - yep - menopause. My hair faded, my skin faded, as if that were possible, everything everso slightly drooped (I like to think imperceptibly, but who am I kidding?) and, suddenly my failsafe smoky eye had started to look a bit Baby Jane. At the same time, my professional life imploded and I began working from home. It’s a chaos of factors that add up to, I guess, a total inability to give a fuck what the guy in the coffee shop thinks about whether or not I’m wearing foundation.

Like most women, I can’t even begin to add up how many hours of my life have been spent on “maintenance” and I’m not exactly what you’d call high maintenance. 

But now? I literally moisturise and go.

Earlier this week I was talking to beauty columnist India Knight about this sudden shift in attitude… I hesitate to call it an “approach” to ageing because it’s less an approach than a sidelong glance. Knight puts it all down to the loss of our “look”. That reliable old favourite many of us rely on to get us through – until suddenly it doesn’t.

Like me, Knight rarely wears makeup. But then, like me, she’s rarely “in the public glare”. (I use the phrase loosely, we’re women in our 50s, we know no-ones looking at us.) And thanks to age/experience/wrinkles/lack of interest, makeup, when it does happen, takes a very much more low key approach than it used to.

For me, now my smoky eye days are behind me, it’s become all about a red lip. Something I was far too scared to contemplate for the first four decades of my makeup-wearing life, has now become my go-to. Red lipstick. And not very much else, except an eyebrow pencil and barely there tinted moisturiser. (Mac Ladybug, if you’re interested.)

But I don’t think it’s just about that. I think that for those of us who take this path, (because there are plenty of other paths to take if you’re financially privileged enough to be in the position to take them), it’s at least as much about can’t be arsed as anything else. And I don’t just mean, can’t be arsed to spend five minutes slapping on a face, I mean can’t be arsed to play that game any more. To spend valuable time trying to force myself to meet a beauty standard I never really managed to attain anyway and more valuable time beating myself up about it.

I’m not pretending that I don’t occasionally glance in a shop window as I’m passing and wonder who that beige person is. Or try to wipe the smudge off my sunglasses before realising it’s my crow’s feet reflected back at me. I’m not pretending that I don’t bung on some slap when I have to be on stage or on camera. I’ve even been shamed into flinging on some lippy when I know I’ll be interviewing someone glam on Zoom for The Shift pod.

But back to Pamela Anderson and the furore surrounding her makeup-free* face. (*Was it makeup-free or was it “makeup-free”? There’s a difference and, having scrutinised the images – I’m sad like that – I’m inclined to think it was the latter, not that it really matters a damn. Because let’s be frank, her face is fabulous with or without makeup.)

On the contrary, I think what we’re looking at here, is a woman getting comfortable in her own skin. A woman who has, largely, ceased to care very much whether the keyboard warriors think she shouldn’t be allowed out looking like that. ‘I think we all start looking a little funny when we get older,’ she told Elle magazine earlier this year. ‘It’s fun and freeing and a little rebellious… And I’m kind of laughing at myself when I look at the mirror. I go, “Wow, this is really what’s happening to me?” It’s a journey.’

Anderson has form where going makeup-free is concerned. This year at least. So I want to believe this is symptomatic of something more significant than just fashion. I want to believe that it wasn’t just a super-smart stunt to get Isabel Marant a few extra headlines. I want to believe that makeup-free or minimal or whatever isn’t just “in” this season. That it’s a sign that older women, at least, are slowly but surely stopping playing that game, unless it suits them to do so. The male gaze game, but also the female gaze game (after all, at least half the time, all this slap, those crazy shoes, etc is at least as much, if not more, for the admiration of other women than the approval of men). I want to believe that we are reaching a point where we can look in the mirror and go, you know what? I’m enough. Whether or not we then choose to whack on some mascara and red lipstick is up to us.