Gwyneth Paltrow is good at selfies. No surprises there, right? The Goop creator is a movie star. She definitely knows how to work a camera.

Her Instagram is littered with the fruits of her labour. Paltrow has shared selfies with her Goop “work wife” Elise Loehnen, Chief Content Officer of the wellness platform, with her friends Derek Blasberg and Scarlett Johansson, with her children and, most frequently, with her husband Brad Falchuk.

This week, Paltrow shared an album of selfies from a recent “gathering” with her closest friends. Some of the women pictured included stylist Rachel Zoe, architect Brigette Romanek, actor Demi Moore, entrepreneurs Moj Mahdara and Cassandra Grey and DJ Samantha Ronson. Every single person in Paltrow’s selfies grins at the camera, face free of make-up. That’s right, Paltrow threw a “no make-up” party. And everyone was invited (on Instagram).

“No make-up, no filter. An amazing gathering of some of the best women on planet earth,” Paltrow captioned her images, adding the hashtag #GoopGlow. 

Paltrow has often used no make-up selfies as a way of celebrating the innate, natural beauty of women. Which isn’t to say that if you love to put on make-up you are going against that idea, but rather that wearing make-up should always be a choice that you make for yourself. 

On her 44th birthday in 2016, Paltrow shared a bare-faced selfie to reinforce that message.

“One of the most interesting thing about being a woman is that around the time you turn 40, you get what I like to call a software upgrade,” Paltrow explained in a statement. “The future suddenly has scarcity to it, and the past is all over your face. I have been very inspired by the #nomakeup movement as the message behind it says, here I am, this is me. This is what I look like, this is where I am in time, and I embrace it.” 

In the intervening years since sharing that first image, Paltrow has continued to prioritise make-up free selfies and images on her social media channels. A brief scroll through her Instagram grid reveals almost a dozen bare-faced pictures. “I love how you look so natural,” one commenter wrote, on an image of Paltrow and her two children in May 2019.  

Speaking on Goop’s podcast Beauty Closet, Paltrow stressed that her ‘no make-up’ pledge isn’t only for Instagram, either, describing her daily make-up routine as “dispassionate”.

“Do you get glamorous for a date night out? Like, you’re no make-up during the day at work…” asked the podcast host.

“Sadly, for my husband, no,” Paltrow responded. “Really the only time I do it is if I have to go be ‘Gwyneth Paltrow’ on a red carpet or something like that, and I have my hair and make-up done.”

But, Paltrow added, her husband always tells her that she is at her most beautiful when she is make-up free. “He loves it when my hair is frizzy and I have freckles and no make-up,” Paltrow said on the podcast. “He just likes me super, super natural.” 

Images: Getty