Katie Couric Stuns Makeup-Free For PEOPLE’s ‘Beautiful’ Issue

Katie Couric recently went totally makeup-free for PEOPLE Magazine’s ‘Beautiful’ Issue. Fans are seeing Couric like never before as she’s usually all done up with makeup and hair looking perfect. When she was first asked to go makeup-free for the issue, she had one reaction: “Are you out of your mind? Hell no,” she remembers.

After some serious thought, though, the 64-year-old thought, “Why not?” and decided to bare all. “Doing a shoot without makeup, makes you feel both liberated and vulnerable,” she says. “You feel great because you’re being true to who you are and how you look. It’s a huge dose of reality! On the other hand, let’s face it, people feel prettier when they have some makeup on that enhances their features. So I think doing a shoot like this requires a lot of trust.”

Katie Couric embraces her makeup-free, all-natural beauty

Couric says she feels proud to be able to embrace her natural beauty and encourages women of all ages to do the same. “When we start seeing women as they age and appreciate the beauty that comes with that, women will stop trying to look young all the time,” she explains. “Someone said to me, ‘I have so many wrinkles.’ I said, ‘I think wrinkles show a lifetime of laughing and smiling.’ And that’s an awesome thing to show on your face.”

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Now in her mid-60s, Couric says she has an “interesting” relationship with makeup and says she doesn’t do “the full spackle treatment” anymore. “If you wear too much, it’s really aging. If you wear none, it’s terrifying. You just have to wear the right amount to enhance yourself but not to cover up who you are… Now people are saying to me, ‘We don’t like you with all that makeup anymore!’ I think people appreciate showing the real you.”

She encourages all women of all ages to embrace their natural self