Gwyneth Paltrow was featured in People Magazine’s Most Beautiful issue, which must have pleased her to no end considering she truly believes people are “triggered” by her enormous beauty and wealth. Her profile in the People Mag special issue started out sort of interesting, all about Gwyneth’s preference to be bare-faced and makeup-free, but then it quickly devolved into an infomercial for her Goop-brand makeup. Of course it did. The conversation about makeup actually happened with nearly all of People’s Most Beautiful women – that was the theme of this issue, talking about makeup. Gwyneth didn’t need People Magazine to tell her that she’s beautiful – she already KNOWS that. But they agreed to let her shill her makeup, so she deigned to allow a peasant magazine to speak about her beauty.

She’s a Goopy tomboy: “I’ve never been a makeup person really. I always love not wearing makeup. For me, makeup has always meant that I’m going to work. I went to an all-girls school and we didn’t wear makeup. We weren’t dressing up for anyone. All through junior high and high school, makeup never became part of my routine. And I think part of that is because I was always a little bit of a tomboy. I like the feeling of having clean skin.”

Why she created her beauty line GOOPGLOW: It was because she “really wanted to create clean products” that would give a youthful, lit-from-within look. “You can use them if you wear makeup and your makeup will look even better, but the GOOPGLOW line is really fantastic for people who want to get their skin to a place where they look naturally glowy and dewy and don’t have to wear makeup,” she says of the collection, which includes an overnight peel, a serum, an exfoliator and more.

The world’s perception of beauty is changing: Barbie’s blonde hair, blue eyes and slim figure represented the perfect woman when she was growing up in the early ’80s, but today, more “body types, skin colors, hair colors and cultures are included in that ideal… When I was in my formative years, we were told that beauty was basically a Barbie doll; by the time my daughter was in her formative years, that had changed tremendously. And I’ve always thought that’s real progression. When I think about me being a kid in the early ’80s and what I was shown as examples is much different than what she was shown. As we continue to become more inclusive around our ideas of what is aspirational beauty, we all win.”

What she’s learned about beauty: “The more you know yourself and accept yourself, the more you accept who you are and what you look like wholeheartedly. I always think there’s sort of an irony that when you really accept yourself — physically — is when you have gray hair. I do think there’s a truth to that.”

[From People]

For what it’s worth, I was the opposite with makeup – I wore makeup through high school and college, and then when I hit my 20s, I just stopped. It was cycle of breaking out and wearing makeup to cover the breakouts and then breaking out because I wore too much makeup. Once I stopped the cycle, my skin vastly improved and I didn’t feel like wearing makeup anymore. Plus, I started using a good night cream in my late 20s and that’s worked wonders too. But the idea that Gwyneth was or is some kind of tomboy because she doesn’t like to wear makeup? I don’t think she really “gets” what a tomboy is.

As for the changing perceptions of beauty… I mean, she’s right to a certain extent. The most beautiful women (IMO) of the ‘90s were women like Winona Ryder and Kate Moss and Angelina Jolie, and then towards the end of the decade, it became all about Jennifer Lopez and Beyonce. I still credit those two women with my generation’s cultural shift of acceptable and celebrated “beauty.” That being said, I have my doubts about whether Gwyneth is now (or was ever) happy about the shift away from Barbie beauty.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Avalon Red.