It's a little ironic that the number one icon of the 2000s plastic fantastic aesthetic is quickly becoming the 2020s icon of makeup-free bliss, but that's exactly what Pamela Anderson is doing.
The Barbed Wire and Baywatch actress has made yet another makeup-free appearance this week, the first of 2024, as she appeared in a campaign for luxury fashion house Proenza Schouler.
Anderson can be seen posing, seemingly sans-cosmetics, in a range of promotional shots, where the actress's poker thin brows and even skin tone speaks for itself.
She wears red textured halternecks and oversized white blazers (a new wardrobe staple of Pammy's), and is lit by the type of lighting that would make a typical makeup-free individual hiss like a vampire.
Yet Anderson is cool, collected and indisputably radiant. This is not her first rodeo. Pammy has been going makeup free under the glare of those big flashing bulbs since early last year, when she debuted her stripped back look for the first time on the cover of WWD in February.
Next, she took her blank canvas to Paris Fashion Week, sending shock waves through tabloids and comment sections — but remaining remarkably nonplussed herself. “I’m makeup free at home, so why not for Paris Fashion Week? I really didn’t know anyone would notice it, but I’m glad it became a positive message,” she told People in an interview at the time.
Then Anderson proved that makeup-free living could be done in even the harshest of climates: Christmas party season, that is. Her appearance at the British Fashion Awards in December 2023 was barefaced and beautiful, paired with an equally understated ensemble by Victoria Beckham — she was a vision in cream. "I’m just keeping it simple,” she told Vogue on the night. “I have no glam team or anything here.”And if this latest Proenza Schouler campaign is anything to go by, Pammy clearly has no plans on moving back to the brushes and palettes for 2024. In fact, she made it quite obvious last year that this was not a phase, nor some kind of stunt.
"I felt so free. It was not meant to be a statement, it is not world peace and I didn’t know if anybody would notice," Anderson told The Telegraph in 2023. "I just wanted to spend more time in Paris. I wanted to go walking through the gardens, and look at the gardens and the sculptures and the architecture. I am not sitting in a make-up chair for three hours. I looked in the mirror and said, ‘You are almost 60, this is good enough, just enjoy Paris and not play the game’.”
Anderson also explained how feeling comfortable going makeup-free is an unexpected benefit of ageing, though she prefers to call it "life-ing." "Chasing youth is futile," she told People last year. "All we can do is embrace who we are at the moment we are in, and be okay with where our feet stand right now.”
If this is the mood for 2024, our alarms, bank accounts and sleep schedules will be incredibly grateful. Let's let Pammy lead the way.
