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Pamela Anderson has been married five times. She has made the kind of romantic decisions – impulsive, reckless, incorrigible – that suggest someone who struggles to be alone. She had known her first husband only a few days; her second marriage lasted four months; she described her most recent, in 2020, as “a disaster”. Now, at 58, she is finally single.
“There’s that great Osho quote – ‘The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love.’ That’s where I’m at right now,” she told AnOther magazine. “I just want to unleash the dragon. I don’t need anybody in my way. I want to get it out. It happens at different times in everybody’s life, and this is my time.”
Inspiration can come from the most unlikely of places, but the pneumatic 90s pin-up must be the most unexpected feminist icon so far. And yet, her new insistence on decentring men is merely the latest entry in a list of role model moves she has made recently. It’s quite the 180 from someone whose raison d’être once appeared to be the male gaze, who surgically altered her body to cartoon proportions to appeal to them, who has said: “My boobs had a career and I was just tagging along.” Thanks to her, a badly scripted, worse acted teatime TV show about lifeguards was an international smash hit. (No one tuned in to Baywatch for the articles.)
Since then, she has parlayed her celebrity currency into a more meaningful entity, using her platform to speak about animal rights and environmental activism. Her double D implants were removed in 1999. She has also done something dramatic to her face. No, not like that.
Somebody most recognisable when plastered in heavy makeup choosing not to wear any at all on various red carpets may not technically be brave, comparatively, with matters of life or death. But maybe you have noticed what it’s like for women out there, especially Of A Certain Age.
Many would feel vulnerable, exposed way beyond the naked face without makeup, but when you’re Anderson, who has been valued for and scrutinised on her appearance her entire career, it must be an especially daunting prospect. She’s doing it anyway. No makeup is quickly becoming her second act trademark, and feels exciting because it’s giving defiant.
“My kids used to joke that I spent half my life in a makeup chair. They would be scrambling around my feet. I was doing TV series and photoshoots. And I just thought one day: ‘Am I going to do this for the rest of my life? No, I have too much else to do. I’d rather go for a walk.’”
It began in 2023, at Paris fashion week, when she decided she would rather explore the city than spend hours having her face painted. She ignored the pushback: “A lot of people chimed in. Everyone was against me, even my kids, and the very small team that I have were like: ‘You have to have a glam team, you have to have a stylist, you have to have this and that.’ And I said: ‘No, I don’t … I really don’t.’”
There comes a point in most women’s lives where doing their makeup becomes a drag, no pun intended. If you are going somewhere special, the ritual of getting ready can be part of the fun, but as we disappear into middle age, the day-to-day eyeliner, mascara and foundation can begin to feel like an obligation to the world. Your duty. Paint on an acceptable face, don’t scare the children. Before Anderson, giving that up might have felt like giving up. Instead, no makeup has been rebranded as a power move. Making a choice not to, rather than not having the energy to bother any more. Prioritising going for a walk – something that’s about how we feel, rather than how we look.
The 2026 Anderson seems a very different human being to the one we knew in her initial heyday. She describes herself as “a late bloomer as a kid, as a teenager, as a woman. And I’m still blooming.”
Proof it’s never too late to become your true self and surprise everyone.
Polly Hudson is a freelance writer
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