No-Beauty Beauty Is The New No-Makeup Makeup

To eschew beauty labor and call it a status symbol is a very chic idea. It’s also an insular one.

I’m one fashion season late to this, but last October a makeup-free Pamela Anderson was photographed at Paris Fashion Week, inspiring take after take as a woman of certain notoriety (famous for being sexy and hot) who dared come as she is. Oh, and she’s also in her 50s. Unheard of behavior!

The occupational hazard of being a sex (or beauty) symbol is that it very often involves a level of fickle public scrutiny that eventually becomes a snake eating its own tail (or words), especially as the meaning of sexiness (and beauty) evolves. I didn’t post about it because I don’t have a take on this. I don’t think it was a PR stunt and she continues to publicly not wear makeup, but it’s more our (the public’s) curiosity than a calculated statement of hers that is making a whole thing. I think this woman is just fed UP and has achieved a level of DGAF that allows her to live her most peaceful, sexy life.

Makeup has a tricky reputation of being a creator as well as an obscurer of beauty — the sentiment of which is usually decided by one’s attitude toward women and femininity. Makeup can be a useful tool for self-expression, creativity, and play. And makeup can also feel like a chore for the wearer when it’s bought, applied, and worn in service of social adherence and approval.

They say if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. Within beauty labor, however, exists a tension that tangles obligation, stigma, rebellion, and joy together that can often confuse your intentions with your desires. (Beauty is connection, after all, and connection is a universal drive of the human condition.) Can you really love what you do if you resent or disagree with why you do it?