Pamela Anderson stopped wearing makeup. Women her age say going bare-faced is 'freeing' — but it's not for everyone.

Hear the name Pamela Anderson and you might picture the blond bombshell from her Baywatch days, back when she was seldom seen without a smokey eye, shimmering skin or glossy lips. In recent months, however, the actress — nominated this week for a Golden Globe for her leading role in The Last Showgirl — has adopted a more bare-faced look, hitting the red carpet without makeup.

Anderson, now 57, has cited a few reasons for her decision to ditch makeup — the death of her makeup artist, an interest in "challenging" the concept of beauty, feeling more comfortable in her own skin — and has clarified that she might dabble in it here and there ("I love to wear makeup too sometimes," she said at the 2024 Gotham Awards. "It has a time and a place.") While not everyone has responded positively to Anderson's new look, many‚ including her Last Showgirl co-star Jamie Lee Curtis, who posted a bare-faced selfie in tribute — have applauded her.

“As a former actress and clinical psychologist, I am aware of industry and societal pressures for women to wear makeup when it may not be in alignment with their own values,” says Charissa Chamorro, an assistant clinical professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Many women, she notes, are taught from a young age to wear makeup to look more beautiful. “This can be empowering."

While the societal pressure to wear makeup doesn’t fade, more women are choosing to forgo wearing makeup as they get older. This can be empowering too, Chamorro adds. "What feels groundbreaking now is that women may finally feel like they truly have the freedom to choose what works for them,” she says. Anderson, she notes, is "serving as a role model to many women, particularly older women, as she’s emulating the message that women do not have to conform to popular standards."

How do other women of Anderson's generation feel? We asked a few about makeup, aging and confidence.

'I realized how freeing it is to be outside of the male gaze'

Rachel Wolf, 54, didn’t start wearing a full face of makeup until she turned 40 and struck out on her own as a filmmaker and producer. “I needed to get my new career going,” she says. Wolf thought she needed to wear makeup to be taken seriously. Evidence backs up Wolf’s impressions. A 2022 study found that women who wear makeup are perceived as being “more attractive, competent, dominant and more socially prestigious,” which can help them be successful at work.

But things changed when Wolf went through menopause and noticed that men stopped paying attention to her as she got older. “Ageism is a real thing,” she tells Yahoo Life. At first, she found the change “kind of devastating.” Over time, however, she realized "how freeing it is to be outside the traditional male gaze.” It dawned on her how much time she'd “dedicated to calculating how to manage men’s opinion of me” and found that devastating too. Eventually, she decided to ditch all but the most basic makeup.

Although Wolf is comfortable with her decision, she acknowledges that there's a privilege involved when women like her and Anderson go bare-faced. “The more financially secure you are, the less women feel the need to impress people for a job or a promotion,” she says.

'Maybe, thanks to Pamela, I don’t need to worry about it'

Angela Carpenter, 56, wears less makeup now than she used to. However, she’s unwilling to ditch it entirely. “In my teens and 20s, I may or may not have put on makeup even while camping and had a butane curling iron to do my hair where there was no electricity,” she tells Yahoo Life. Looking back, Carpenter sees her younger self as “insecure and self-conscious.”

But “that degree of self-consciousness about my looks stopped long ago,” she says. No longer caring what other people think is “the gift of age," she notes.

“Don’t we all get to the point where we don’t give two figs what anyone else thinks and do what we want to do for ourselves?” Carpenter says. Instead of wearing a full face of makeup like she did when she was younger, Carpenter now opts for a simpler “no-makeup makeup look." These days, "it takes a couple of minutes to be ready instead of half an hour,” she says.

That said, Carpenter still feels pressure to go more glam when she attends special events several times a year. She’s been searching for “an occasion look” that suits her new approach to makeup. But now, “Maybe, thanks to Pamela, I don’t need to worry about it,” she says.

'I went cold turkey'

When Marianne Sarcich, now 59, first moved to New York City in her 20s, she couldn’t imagine leaving her apartment without makeup. At one point, she hired a professional makeup artist to teach her the ropes. “I followed what I learned religiously,” she tells Yahoo Life.

Then, years later, Sarcich had “a huge aha moment.” She realized that her refusal to go out in public without a full face of makeup was because she might not be seen “as good enough” with a bare face. “At that moment, I was so jolted by the realization that I knew my next steps — and that was to stop wearing makeup completely. I went cold turkey. Never looked back,” she says. Sarcich says that not wearing makeup is “very freeing.” It “allows me to be my genuine self and to know that I am accepted for who I am as a person and not what I look like,” she says.

Sarcich’s belief that she doesn’t need to wear makeup solidified when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016. One thing she's picked up from the breast cancer community is the phrase "stop should-ing all over yourself." According to Sarcich, "it means to do what's best for you and not what you believe you should be doing,” she says. Now she only wears makeup occasionally, such as when she speaks at breast cancer events.

Sarchich thinks Anderson’s move will help others who “just need that nudge to do what they want to do and not what they think they should do.”

'It's just not for me'

When Dianne Boyer, 64, read that Pamela Anderson had decided to swear off makeup for good, she asked herself, “Could I do that?” After reflecting on what life would be like with a bare face, Boyer decided that lifestyle wasn’t for her.

“My makeup story started with my mom, who, up until the day she passed away at 85, got up every morning and ‘put her face on,’” she says. While Boyer was growing up, her mother told her that makeup always helped her get ready to face the day. It was a lesson Boyer took to heart. “Wearing makeup isn’t just about how I look. It’s about how it makes me feel. It’s how I feel most like myself,” she tells Yahoo Life.

As a stylist, Boyer spends a lot of time thinking about image and understands why some women ditch makeup. “I don’t think going makeup-free is just something beautiful celebrities can get away with. I know plenty of women who don’t wear makeup. And if that makes them feel confident, that’s fantastic. It’s just not for me,” she says.

As Boyer gets older, she says makeup helps her feel like an older version of herself rather than someone who looks old. “I want to keep looking like myself. It’s not about holding on to youth. I just want to be the same Dianne that people have known for over 50 years," she says. "And that’s me with makeup.”