“Real Beauty: Katie Couric Goes Barefaced and Bold for PEOPLE Magazine”

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.”

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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.”

RELATED:Dol­ly Par­ton Nev­er Goes With­out Make­up In Case Of An Emer­gency

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

Nowa­days, Couric’s make­up rou­tine real­ly just comes down to the essen­tials. “Mas­cara makes a world of dif­fer­ence,” Couric explains. “My eye­lash­es are pret­ty light and my eyes kind of dis­ap­pear when I don’t have mas­cara on. L’Oréal mas­cara from CVS is my go-to.” In terms of her daugh­ters, Eli­nor, 30, and Car­o­line, 25, she tries not to focus too much on appear­ance with them.

ome­times I’m neu­rot­ic about the way I look. I try not to say, ‘I feel fat or look fat in this.’ It’s such a bad exam­ple for your kids. I haven’t been per­fect and I don’t think I’ve always been great about that, but I tried to bal­ance that focus,” she says. “Girls are so much more than their pack­ag­ing.”