I recently read an article about Pamela Anderson, the gorgeous star of Baywatch who was the dream of every male and the envy of many females. She had a shapely body, a captivating face and talent to go with it. And naturally, like most women who are public figures, she wore makeup. Lots of it.
Recently she opted to go without makeup, appearing during Paris’ famous Fashion Week with the face she was born with. Some people were aghast.
The same thing happened years ago when Oprah Winfrey did a show with her entire audience deciding to come clean. Some of the attendees did appear rather uncomfortable. Oprah went facial commando for magazine covers as well.
I don’t know when we decided that our faces are not fit to be seen in public without makeup, but the trend is starting to trickle down to tween children ten years old and younger. Check out the Ulta Kids articles to see what a mess it has become, with children buying anti-aging products–which are aimed at adults more than twice their ages–and leaving samplers and actual opened and discarded products in their destructive wake.
Even the trend on social media seems to include a makeup tutorial by any woman posting details of her personal life. I’ve watched clips with a mixture of fascination and shock as ladies talk about their cheating boyfriend or boss from Hell as they dab seemingly too-dark highlights onto their facial curves with funky shaped applicators, and turn their eyelashes into lengthy, dark broom bristles sharp enough to take out a boyfriend’s eyeball if kissing gets too close.
My luck with makeup has been difficult. I was often too light for the lightest shade of foundation. At modeling school, my attempts at pancake application left arid desert cracks on my cheeks (again, a shade or two too dark). Add to that a lifetime of fighting severe acne, and it was nearly impossible to make my face look as if I were not trying to banish pimples under several layers of tinted grease. For most of my working life, I’ve gone facial commando except for brows and lipstick, and my face seems to be grateful for the lack of over-attention.
Pamela Anderson is in her mid-50s now, and she looks spectacular with just her face showing. She has said that she wants to emotionally stabilize her own perceptions of who she is; having been a model for Playboy and a television icon beside such talents as David Hasselhoff (who, by the way, probably did not require much in the line of makeup on set: men nearly never do), as well as the focus of a scandal when somebody leaked and tried to capitalize on a private intimate video of her sans makeup and clothing, she deserves to be in touch with herself as the person who has a life outside what beauty perceives us to have. Katie Couric and Justine Bateman have also climbed aboard the natural face train.
Maybe we should all do that. Are we a sculpted painting of a hollow cheekbone, or do we have souls and thoughts and feelings that work just as well without the pricey plaster on our faces? There is also the stress we place on our skin as we manipulate the stuff onto our cheeks and tug at our tendons and muscles blending in this contour and that flawless matte of skintone. That ultimately leads to wrinkles, and the makeup companies are ready for us with those anti-aging creams the tweens are going Karen over in the Ulta stores.
Leave your face alone. Let it be the canvas of your life. Enjoy the smile wrinkles and accept when you earn those age lines.
I see my face in the morning, and I see that my soul is intact. I have nothing to hide.
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