Gwyneth Paltrow, 52, recently shared a series of candid Instagram photos showing off her natural skin during New York Fashion week.
The actress and Goop founder appeared completely bare-faced—no filters, no fillers, no edits—and fans flooded her comments with praise.
“The first picture is perfect. It’s of a gorgeous woman who is aging beautifully and shows traces of life. Thank you for every woman above the age of 40!” one fan wrote.
Another fan commented, “Okay, I am VERY into this frown and normal lady face lines. No knock on injections, but (as an aging Gen Xer myself) seeing a grown woman’s face with its earned gravitas is a MOOD 
.”
But this conversation isn’t new.
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At 52, Paltrow has long spoken about beauty standards and the pressure to preserve youth. And while the latest wave of comments on her unfiltered photos weren’t negative, they reveal just how deeply our culture remains fixated on aging.
In a piece for Glamour, writer Emma Tannenbaum unpacked this phenomenon saying,
“As a society, we are definitely being force-fed a barrage of filtered and edited content, which has made aging without Botox and fillers feel like a radical act—but how can we normalize aging without hyperfocusing on the wrinkles and creases every time a woman over 40 exists in public? Is that even possible?”
The comments on Paltrow’s photos have reignited a larger conversation—not just about beauty, but about how we choose to value women as they grow older.
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“It’s a weird thing to be—I don’t mean in a pejorative way—objectified,” Paltrow said on the Goop podcast, The Beauty Closet, in 2019. “I think when you come to age…what does it mean to get wrinkles and get closer to menopause, and all these things…. What happens to your identity as a woman if you’re not f—-able and beautiful?”
The star also told Glamour in 2023, “I think there’s a lot of celebrities in our culture who clearly use injectables, and I think it’s nice for women to understand, Oh, if you’re past 45 and you have no wrinkles of any kind, you might be getting a little bit of help here and there. And I think it’s nice; I think it’s a more candid and a more transparent approach to beauty.”
Pamela Anderson is another star who shares the same sentiments as Paltrow. In an interview with Allure last year, the former Playboy model opened up about aging in Hollywood.
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“I’ve tried Botox, I’ve tried filler, but I haven’t had anything like that for over three or four years. My skin is very sensitive and I did Fraxel a little bit on my decolletage and it went black so I’ve always been scared of stuff like that. I’ve done Botox where my eyebrows just fall immediately and I look like a different person… and I thought why am I doing this sh*t?,” the star said.
“So I’m free and clear of that stuff and I look like myself again.” She added, “I color my hair from a box, always have.”
Anderson made headlines when she ditched the makeup for Paris Fashion Week in 2023.
She spoke to Better Homes and Gardens about this decision saying, “I started thinking that I want to challenge the idea of beauty and this mask we put on. As soon as I took the mask off, the whole world opened up.”
