What happened when I stopped wearing make-up for Christmas party season

I love December. It kicks off with my birthday – yup, I just turned 54 – and ends with Christmas. It’s peak party time for me, celebrations both personal and official, a time to get out the sparkly frock and kick up a little dancefloor dust.

But this year my party season has had a different face. Literally. For the first time in my life I’ve been out and about without any make-up. I’m still putting on the glitz in terms of hair, clothes and shoes, but I’ve been doing the festive rounds this year with bare skin. And – a big deal for me – no red lipstick.

The first time I ventured out with no make-up on was for a big awards do – the Inclusive Awards in Manchester’s Midland Hotel – where I was honoured to be put on this year’s Diversity Power List for the work I’ve been doing about changing the story around midlife women. I’d gone to stay with my daughter, who is at university there, and was getting dressed up in her bedroom. I put on my trusty sequin frock and she sweetly accessorised me with lots of her jewellery – silver to match my shoes and bag.

And then I said, “Oh, I’ll put on my face”, and she and her flatmate said: “Why? You look great as you are.” And I suddenly thought – maybe they are right. Maybe make-up is just a habit, a security blanket, and I don’t actually need it. So I took a deep breath, applied a bit of cherry lip salve and some moisturiser, and set off into the night.

It felt weird. Like I’d forgotten something. But it was fine. You know what? I don’t think anyone noticed. They certainly didn’t say anything. And for me, it was better than fine, in fact, because I didn’t have my usual worries that my mascara was sliding down my face and giving me panda eyes, or that my foundation was clogging into my wrinkles (it happens as we age), or that my cheeks would look tangerine compared with my neck and décolletage… (a pet hate).

Indeed, when I popped into the Ladies after dinner – worried that I might look like a ruddy fishwife after a few glasses of celebratory champagne – to my surprise, I looked pretty fresh (though that might have been booze goggles). But looking around me at lots of women of a certain age dolled up to the nines in their finery and plenteous slap, I did feel a bit smug. There’s that old Coco Chanel adage – when you’ve got your whole outfit on, take something off. Well, I felt that without a masque of a face I was a bit more chic, certainly more authentic – and a lot more free. It was liberating.

If I’m honest, this first outing wasn’t an entirely spur-of-the-moment decision (although the approbation of my beloved daughter probably gave me the confidence I needed to go through with it). Ever since lockdown – when I stopped wearing make-up, high heels or any of the uncomfortable structured clothes that had been a feature of my life as a senior executive for nearly three decades – putting on my face for the outside world has felt weird. I now find it a bore and a chore.

If I was running late, which was often, I would find myself sitting on the Tube – whizzing to make a keynote speech or go to a client meeting – applying concealer and my ironically named “Real Skin” foundation with a sponge on the Northern Line. Sometimes I’d pile it all on and reckon I looked worse not better.

I began to wonder why, since I am now happy tramping about in trainers rather than heels and have given up the Spanx, I still felt obliged to paint a mask on my face. I began to wonder who I was doing it for; it certainly wasn’t me, as I hate the feeling of make-up on my skin, and mascara makes my eyes hurt. And my husband loathes make-up and prefers me au naturelle.

Then I thought about my old, inspirational boss, a woman in her late fifties who often wore no make-up at all, even while chairing incredibly high-level meetings. Her confidence was inspirational; how secure in herself she must feel, I thought, not to bow to our patriarchal culture that brainwashes us all into thinking that women owe men pretty (as the title of a bestselling Gen Z book almost puts it). It was liberating to watch her in action.

I wondered if I too could be that brave, particularly since I’ve spent the last year writing and publishing a bestselling book about midlife (Much More to Come, HarperCollins) which explores the programming women of my generation have been subject to. It made me question the way our culture preaches that it is the first duty of womankind to make ourselves as attractive as possible to the male lens at all opportunities, and all ages. Particularly as past 50 we are essentially sweating a diminishing asset.

I remember being at a huge charity ball, full of coiffed and groomed older women in ludicrously expensive outfits, who had collectively probably spent more than the GDP of a small country on facelifts and fillers, Pilates and products – and to what end? I began to wonder how else they could have spent all that time and effort – and to think about the mighty beauty-industrial complex that bamboozles women into thinking they have value only if they are young and beautiful. And that if they aren’t young and beautiful, they need to fake it, lining the pockets of some of the most profitable companies on Earth. Did you know that there are bigger mark-ups on beauty products than any other consumer goods? That the average food product has a 40 per cent product margin, while beauty products are more like 80 per cent?

I’ve felt angry about that for years. By rejecting make-up, I feel I am finally doing something to act on that feeling. And also at 54, I am a realist. No product is going to make me look 20 again – and I wouldn’t want it to. I like being what we at Noon, my platform for midlife women, call a Queenager; I feel like I am in my prime. In my power. Being my true self, externally and internally, leaning into my authenticity – that this, just this, is who I am and it is enough.

Growing into ourselves, feeling happy with ourselves, is midlife’s journey. And it feels amazing. I spend my life with my community of women in midlife; so many of us, I’ve found, exist in a constant state of lack: feeling we aren’t good enough, pretty enough, thin enough, successful enough. Stepping out of the beauty arms race is a wonderful way of saying goodbye to all that. It’s saying “I love myself enough, am happy enough in my own skin, to just be me, as I am, everywhere I go. Here I am, accept me.”

Although I came to this decision myself, I am far from the only one. In fact it is a bit of a Queenager trend. The charge has been led (in celebrity world) by Pamela Anderson – yes, she of Baywatch and Playboy fame, who attended Paris Fashion Week last year make-up free. OK, it’s easier of course if you are a natural beauty – and a good marketing plan if, like Pammy, you start your own skincare line. But to be fair to Anderson, she definitely means it, and the enthusiasm with which she talks about being make-up free is contagious.

For instance, Anderson appeared on Drew Barrymore’s TV show last month barefaced and Drew and her co-host and the entire female studio audience followed suit. It was so refreshing to see women just as they are. Not hiding behind a veneer of perfection but being their true selves. Drew, Pamela and the women watching all looked great. Anderson explained that she had gone make-up free as a way of ‘peeling back the layers’ after a lifetime of inhabiting what she described as a “Hallowe’en” or “cartoonish” caricature of what a Playboy model, rock-chick wife and glamour girl “should look like”.

She’d got sick of spending three hours in the make-up chair before attending every fashion show and began to wonder who she was doing it for, saying she no longer “needed to be the prettiest girl in the room” (one of the great reliefs of midlife). On top of that, Anderson explained how she had bought back her grandmother’s house, and returned to the “trees where she was raised”, and now loved being in nature and exploring her authentic self and face. I particularly chimed with her statement that “there is beauty in self-acceptance, imperfection, love” and her wish to show young women “what a real naked older face looks like”.

She is right. A survey in last month’s The Economist found that younger women are now having more surgical procedures than older women. Why? It seems that the tyranny of screens and social media mean younger women are terrified of ageing (and the porn aesthetic of trout-pout lips à la Love Island isn’t helping either). Young women are also wearing more make-up – contouring and foundation, perfect eyebrows etc – to look “Insta perfect and ready” at all times. And anyone with a tween will know about their TikTok-fuelled obsession with expensive skin products.

As an older woman, I agree with Anderson that we need to model self-acceptance, and part of that is showing, proudly, the reality of ageing skin and bodies. My attitude to this shifted when I began to swim outside every day in the Ladies’ Pond on Hampstead Heath surrounded by the beauty of naked bodies of all sizes and ages.

I began to see differently, my eyes adjusting to a new kind of aesthetic; seeing the beauty in these older bodies, in their full breasts, muscled limbs, their capacity to create offspring, to endure. Longevity is the often unacknowledged miracle of our age; we are living almost twice as long now as we did 100 years ago. But instead of embracing that, we are frantically trying to hold back the years. Instead, we need to create a new map of how wonderful ageing can be; after all, the alternative is dying.

But we also need to demonstrate to younger women and the wider culture that a woman’s true worth isn’t in her looks, but her wisdom, character, relationships and achievements. It is our energy, our grace, which is the reality of our attractiveness. No miracle product can ever replicate that. Accepting and honouring who we really are is the golden thread of ageing. For me that starts with putting down the foundation.

So have I kept it up? Well, yes. I went away for my birthday for a lovely stay at the Dormy House Hotel in the Cotswolds and wore no make-up. I hosted my Noon Christmas party in Mayfair barefaced. Some of my Queenagers noticed but the comments were more along the lines of “it’s OK for you, you have great skin”. One of my colleagues said her super-pale eyelashes and eyebrows and blotchy skin meant make-up was more of a must if she wasn’t going to look half asleep. I get that. The other day, when I had bags under my eyes from tiredness I admit to being tempted to reach for the concealer – but then I remembered my other daughter joking to me once when I was busy applying 50 shades of beige to my face that she didn’t know why I bothered. So I didn’t.

A few weeks in and I’ve stuck to it. I’ve upped my skincare routine a bit, making sure to cleanse and moisturise regularly; and reckon my skin is clearer and happier for not being clogged with foundation.

I’m a great believer at this point that there is no right or wrong way – that we all make our own decisions. But, look around. A few years ago it was news that women were allowing their hair to go grey. Now it is common. Maybe renouncing make-up is the next step. The big news to me is that no-one even really notices my lack of slap because no-one is really looking. After a lifetime of being ogled and sexualised, that is actually a relief. So why not give it a whirl? You have nothing to lose but your chains.