Shannen Doherty has made news in recent years with her fight against breast cancer and her positive outlook on life, but she’s still got that well-earned “bad girl” reputation. She even wrote a book about it: Badass: A Hard-Earned Guide to Living Life with Style and (the Right) Attitude. Now, she’s making news for being herself, all natural. And I hope it might just encourage all of us to embrace ourselves and our beauty.
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I think we could also say that she’s been more authentically real and open about her mental and physical struggles. It’s true, though, that she would have preferred to face her battles in private. She didn’t share her cancer recurrence for a year, and then said that she was sharing her battle because it was going to come out in court documents in her lawsuit against State Farm.
Doherty no longer had the luxury of privacy, but she also opened herself up to an entire world of support and encouragement when she shared her stage-4 breast cancer recurrence last year. She’s taken that “being real” authenticity a step further with her Instagram post, without makeup. So, why is her authenticity so important? Why should we care whether an actress (or any of us) wears makeup?
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It’s becoming a bit more common to see famous Hollywood stars post pics that are sans makeup, filters, or strategic retouching. But when we DO get real-life (makeup-free) pics of our favorite female actors, too often they’re stolen paparazzi pictures. Or they are paired with a quiz or slide show AND a line that proclaims something like: “Can You Guess This Is Really Your Favorite Actor?” or “You Won’t Guess Who These Famous Actors Are.”
We’ve been watching her as she grew up on Little House on the Prairie, Our House, Beverly Hills, 90210 and Charmed. People Magazine called her the “iconic Hollywood ‘bad girl’ of the nineties.” Her reputation was well earned, but that was all a long time ago.
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For all her fraught history with Beverly Hills, 90210 and Charmed, I’m most impressed by this more vulnerable version of Doherty. In an interview with Parade magazine, she admitted, “I have a rep. Did I earn it? Yeah, I did. But, after a while you sort of try to shed that rep because you’re kind of a different person. You’ve evolved and all of the bad things you’ve done in your life have brought you to a much better place.”
Doherty IS in a better place with herself, but I think she’s been in a better place for quite a while now. We seem to see her most recent Instagram post and think that she’s just now accepting herself for who she is. Doherty has shared about wanting crow’s feet when she was a kid. Her mom told her that she’d change her mind when she was older.
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Back then, she said, “I refuse to go get Botox or do any of that stuff because I think it’s really important that you actually be able to move your face.” Now, after 11 more years and a few more of life’s brutal experiences (cancer included), she hasn’t changed her mind. She is just finally being heard and understood.
Even if Doherty was embracing herself and her beauty a decade ago, her appreciation has only deepened as she has faced her stage-4 cancer head-on. She says: “It’s like anybody with Stage IV faces this sort of thing, where others want to put you out to pasture.” She’s just not done yet, as she emphasizes: “I’m not ready for pasture. I’ve got a lot of life in me.”
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Are you inspired by Shannen Doherty’s simple beauty, accepting herself just as she is, without Hollywood’s beauty standards? Let us know what you think about it below in the comments!
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