BarcelonaIf anyone who had television in the 1990s and early 2000s was told that Pamela Anderson would end up becoming a standard bearer of natural beauty, they would surely have laughed. But life is capricious like that and Hollywood stars are experts at doing that plot twists unlikely to try to save their lives in the extreme context in which they live. A very apparent but unbearable context that we could define as the weather with the best houses in the world, the loneliness suffered among more people or the discomfort experienced with more luxuries.
Anderson became during the nineties and subsequent decades an international emblem of the most artificial beauty. Her body, voluptuous and full of curves, was her hallmark, next to platinum blonde hair full of extensions, very defined eyebrows, false eyelashes and artificial breasts of a very generous size that became as iconic as all herself Breasts that over the years even she has recognized that they were so important in her image that they had come to overshadow her professionally in the series Baywatchthe production that gave him the most fame and that meant a before and after in his professional and personal life. “I always say it was my breasts that had a career, I was just going to the pack”, said the actress in her biographical documentary, Pamela, a love storywhich aired on Netflix last year. “Except for the dye, the breasts and the shoes, I’m for real,” he quipped to soften his harsh statements.
Incredibly, however, the woman who made men and women fall in love with this performance for more than a decade has finally fought with the character who kidnapped her – and also made her a millionaire – to unearth the woman she really was. A woman who, she claims, has little to do with the artificiality of the entertainment industry. While she’s championed natural beauty in a few other recent public appearances, this week she became an icon of the movement on the CBS show The Drew Barrymore showimmediately in the United States, and also abroad, due to the statements made by its famous guests.
The one that will be the cover of the Playboy on fifteen occasions she tells Barrymore that she made the decision to never again be the woman she didn’t want to be when she was invited to a Vivienne Westwood fashion show last year and showed up with a clean face. “Why waste three hours sitting in a chair doing my makeup when I’m wearing this beauty look Vivienne Westwood?” she says she thought before getting dressed. “I didn’t think anyone would notice, but people started coming up to me and talking about it, and I thought, ‘It’s a great message”, Anderson reflects on that decision taken before going through the photocall. “It was a way to peel back layers and rediscover who I was. I wanted to remember who I was. I realized that I had been playing characters all my life and I wondered who I really was. That’s when I left to go home and I started to plant everything in the garden, to get in touch with nature,” explains the 57-year-old artist.
“I felt great being myself”
“I realized that I felt great being myself and I didn’t want people to recognize me anymore in those characters that I had played. I think I created them to protect myself… Looking back, I think I’m at my best my life”, says the actress during the interview, in which she also confesses that this aesthetic decision has changed the way she lives: “I feel so empowered, so free and so excited about life again… In fact, her inspiring words cause Barrymore to rip off her extensions live and fling them around the set while Anderson is speaking. “I think I have to be honest,” quips the presenter. “Don’t you think it’s liberating? I feel much freer. I’ve had my process, of course, but now I feel free (…). We are our worst critics,” concludes Anderson about this new way of showing himself in public, and Barrymore responds with a very apt: “You’re a pioneer.”
The truth is that not wearing makeup fits perfectly with the public profile that Anderson has been showing in recent years. Far from that commercial and artificial image of a woman fully adapted to heteropatriarchal canons, Anderson has taken advantage of her fame and raised her voice for many causes. Her best-known facets as an activist are animal welfare through the PETA association and her fight for the freedom of Julian Assange, with whom she became romantically involved. He even defended the independence of Catalonia in 2017, when he dedicated one to the cause post on his blog in which he advocated for a referendum.
Being patron of so many causes dedicated to third parties, it seems logical that she should now also champion one that improves the lives of a group to which she directly belongs. It seems only fair that she should try to free them from the aesthetic pressure that for so many years she helped create. It is normal that she is aware of this issue, since the first affected by that pressure was herself. In large part because of the relationship that men wanted to build with her then.
Aside from the cost in media exposure and social criticism that breaking these canons may entail, Pamela Anderson must also be recognized for her generosity in championing this cause, since famous people earn real fortunes from the make-up industry. Just look at how Kylie Jenner and Rihanna have become multimillionaires with their own cosmetics lines. And to those who are tempted to say that she can afford to go without make-up because she is very beautiful, I would invite them to look at how unhappy some people are when they are covered in make-up. Living in alignment with how you feel is the best highlighter.
Source: www.ara.cat
