No makeup. No editing. No filters. Why Nelly Furtado, 46, is embracing body neutrality.
Nelly Furtado is off to a good start with her New Year’s resolutions. “Have a body neutral 2025,” she wrote on Instagram. “Express yourself freely, celebrate your individuality and know that it’s perfectly OK to be OK with what you see in the mirror, and it’s also OK to want something different.”
The “Maneater” artist, 46, shared her message on Instagram alongside two bikini photos. In the caption, she reflected on the revelations she’s had about her body and beauty standards. “This year I became aware of the aesthetic pressure of my work in a brand new way, while simultaneously I experienced new levels of self-love and genuine confidence from within,” she said. The photos are a testament to exactly that. “[In] these photos I have no makeup and there is no editing or filters.”
While she doesn’t often bare it all on her social media, Furtado seemed to be influenced to do so after revealing that she allegedly pursued legal action against companies who were selling beauty and health services based on “myths about me.”
“For whoever cares, I have never had any face or body surgeries or augmentation, besides for veneers on the top row of my teeth, quite recently,” she wrote to set the record straight. Then she went on to practice more transparency about her beauty routines. “So far, I have not had any face or lip injections or fillers of any kind, but I do have a loving, old school facialist who I purchase serums and creams from and I started that when I was 20. The day before photo shoots and red carpets, I drink a lot of water and sleep on my back.”
The pressure that celebrities face to look a certain way is no secret. But the tactics that they leverage to appear flawless often are. Here, Furtado pulls back the curtain on some and experts say it’s important.
What Furtado shared
Although the singer says she hasn’t gone under the knife to permanently change her body or face, Furtado is open about other ways that her appearance has been altered.
“Sometimes on the red carpet or at photo shoots my makeup artist uses face tape to give my eyes, skin and makeup more lift. Sometimes my stylist uses body tape to give a certain look to different silhouettes,” she wrote. “Body makeup can also sometimes be contoured to achieve a certain look. Makeup can do magical things! So can great eyebrows! So can a great hairstylist! So can great underthings!”
Katherine Metzelaar, a registered dietitian specializing in body image, says that Furtado’s transparency is important. Metzelaar tells Yahoo Life: “When celebrities open up about the pressure to look a certain way, it reminds us that these impossible standards affect everyone. Even people who are held up as examples of beauty often don’t feel like they measure up. Hearing that from someone in the spotlight can be powerful.” She also says: We’re so used to seeing perfect images and thinking they’re natural when, in reality, there’s often a lot of effort, a ton of money, and professional help behind those looks.”
Furtado’s unedited photos, in turn, provide a more relatable and realistic portrayal. “I have spider veins and they remind me of my mom and aunties and life so I think that’s why I haven’t parted with them so far,” the singer noted in the caption, inspiring a commenter to share that she too appreciates her spider veins for that same reason.
What does body neutrality have to do with it?
Calling 2025 a body neutral year might allow Furtado to experience less pressure about her appearance. The principle is based on the idea that you don’t have to love or hate your body, but instead just let it be, says therapist Isabella Shirinyan.
“Instead of constantly striving to feel beautiful or battling feelings of inadequacy, body neutrality shifts the focus to what your body does for you rather than how it looks. It helps you break free from the exhausting cycle of self-criticism and external validation, and instead allows space to exist without your worth being tied to your appearance,” she tells Yahoo Life. “It shifts the focus away from perfection and toward function, self-trust and reclaiming autonomy over our bodies in a world that constantly tells us we need to fix them.”
Spider veins or not, Furtado and others practicing body neutrality can feel confident in who they are and what they have to offer outside of their body’s shape or size. As the singer puts it, “We are all cute little humans just bouncing around the earth looking for hugs.”
