Anyone who watched TV in the 1990s is familiar with the slow-motion “Baywatch” run meant to highlight the enviable physiques of the lifeguards at Malibu beach.

The most famous slow-motion jogger, of course, was Pamela Anderson, who went on to have a public profile laced with several high-profile rock romances, a blonde bombshell image, lots of makeup and tight clothing, and, predictably, a sex tape.

Her long-running sex symbol status is what makes Anderson’s newest iteration so extraordinary. Gone are the over-plucked eyebrows, glittery makeup looks, and skimpy outfits. And instead of simply toning down her look into a more polished yet styled version of the 90s version, the actress did a complete 180 and started walking around with a totally bare face that appears natural and shows signs of aging.

Anderson, 58, now looks more like a kindly grandmother at the grocery store than she does like the record holder for most times posing nude for Playboy (14, if you were wondering). She’s also enjoying what appears to be a later-in-life romance with Liam Neeson, which looks sweet enough to melt even the most cynical hearts.

Anderson has been discussing her change in appearance openly ever since it began. She described her over-styled ’90s look as a “defense mechanism.”

Spurred in part by the death of her longtime makeup artist Alexis Vogel in 2019, the celeb said her decision to ditch the cosmetics was “freeing, and fun, and a little rebellious too.”

“Because I did notice that there were all these people doing big makeup looks, and it’s just like me to go against the grain and do the opposite of what everyone’s doing,” she told Elle in 2023.

She also spoke about being confronted with her own reflection, saying, “I’m kind of laughing at myself when I look at the mirror. I go, ‘Wow, this is really…what’s happening to me?’ It’s a journey,” she told the magazine. “But I feel rooted for. I feel good. I’m in a good place.”

In a Vogue interview about going makeup-free at Paris Fashion Week, she explained that her transformation wasn’t a protest. It was personal.

“I just thought, ‘I’m doing this for all the girls out there.’… This is it.”

“You kind of have to challenge beauty sometimes,” she told the outlet. “You know, if we all chase youth, or we’re chasing our idea of what fashion magazines [want] and everything, we’re only gonna be disappointed or maybe a little bit sad. So I feel like this is it.”

Anderson also discussed her plan to forge a path for other women in her age bracket.

“I feel as a woman and a woman of my age, and a woman in the public eye…it’s also your job to be a model of everything,” she shared. “Just all sorts of choices. So I am just being me, kind of who I am, in all these great clothes running around Paris.”

Other celebrities celebrated the move, with Jamie Lee Curtis calling Anderson’s bare face “an act of courage and rebellion” and Scarlett Johansson saying it was a “powerful message for women to see other women rejecting standard beauty norms.”

It’s true that there’s something especially powerful about the unmasking of a star who once embraced the beauty industry to such an extreme. Anderson also seems to reject Hollywood’s relentless obsession with looking young, saying the pursuit is ultimately “futile.”

It stands in stark contrast to some of Anderson’s contemporaries, who are still dancing, dressing, and acting like they did in their 20s, often with mixed results (ahem, Madonna).

Followers are also rooting for Anderson’s relationship with Neeson, who was seemingly drawn to that same sincerity. Their relationship carries the same refreshing quality as Anderson’s beauty revolution.

That’s saying a lot, considering that Anderson has been married five times.

People started noticing the chemistry between Anderson and Neeson on the set of “The Naked Gun” reboot, where Neeson praised Anderson by saying “I can’t compliment her enough, I’ll be honest with you. No huge ego. She just comes in to do the work. She’s funny and so easy to work with. She’s going to be terrific in the film.”

Anderson offered a glowing review of her own, calling her co-star “the perfect gentleman.”

Recently, the pair even pretended to make out on Today as rumors of their romance persisted. Neeson called their connection “lovely,” while Anderson said of their connection, “I think I have a friend forever in Liam. And we definitely have a connection that is very sincere, very loving, and he’s a good guy.” So far, the duo has brushed off any attempts to define their relationship, but it’s obvious just by looking at them that their connection is strong.

To be clear, this isn’t about Anderson becoming some sort of saint. She’s still contradictory. The celeb has been criticized for railing against pornography while insisting that posing nude in Playboy is acceptable because it’s “highbrow.” She was married to avid Trump supporter Kid Rock for a year, but she’s also a fervent supporter of PETA and an animal rights activist. And despite saying she once considered becoming a nun and says prayers every morning, Anderson does not openly practice any specific faith.

To sum up, Anderson isn’t becoming a right-wing influencer anytime soon, but her transformation does point to a very Christian concept: redemption.

Pamela Anderson’s transformation from a sex symbol defined by tabloid headlines to an introspective, grounded woman who has openly reflected on her past mirrors, in many ways, the Christian concept of forgiveness of sin. In Christianity, forgiveness isn’t about erasing history, but about redemption: a cleansing that allows a person to step forward no longer bound by who they once were.

Anderson has spoken candidly about her mistakes and struggles, yet her new chapter embodies grace, renewal, and the reclaiming of dignity, which is very much like the believer who, after confessing and repenting, is restored to a new life in Christ.

Her story shows how a person can be fully known, flaws and all, and still be met with compassion, transformation, and a fresh start free from judgement. And that is a truly beautiful thing to behold.

Parents, your child’s school might be gearing up to push transgender ideology this fall.

As the first day of school approaches, the pressing cultural issue that continues to rile parents and helped catapult Trump to the White House in November remains alive and well in hundreds of school districts across the country despite the president’s efforts to stamp it out.

During his first weeks in office, Trump signed a pair of executive orders threatening public schools with existential federal funding cuts if they refuse to root out “gender ideology,” including erasing it from the curriculum, banning males from girls’ sports teams and locker rooms, and no longer encouraging children’s “social transitions,” which can include using new pronouns, allowing students to use the bathrooms of the opposite sex, and hiding their transgender identities from parents.

“There’s a sort of coast-to-coast misconception about the fact that the cavalry’s arrived and all of these bad policies are suddenly being rescinded,” said Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president at Defending Education, which fights gender indoctrination in public schools.

“Unfortunately, factually the reality remains something completely different,” Perry told The Daily Wire. “We’ve seen kind of a mixed bag. There are some [districts] that are holdouts. There are some that are going along to get along, and then there are others who are simply hiding what they’ve done by pulling off their particular policies from that educational outlet’s website and essentially passing the buck back to the state.”

In the wake of Trump’s orders, some school districts scrambled to comply and scrapped their transgender policies, which they had adopted a few years ago at the peak of the ideology’s influence.

In deep red Nebraska, Bellevue Public Schools reversed its 2015 policy. The district now allows teachers to disclose a child’s transgender identity to parents and says students must use the bathroom of their biological sex.

The district cannot afford to lose its $10 million in federal funding, and parents were very concerned, according to Superintendent Jeff Rippe.

“We’ve had concerned students, concerned parents, about this policy,” Rippe said. “$10 million is what we get in federal funding. And that means a lot to this school district. Speaking personally, we cannot afford to lose $10 million.”

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On the other side of the political aisle, entire blue states have openly bucked Trump’s orders. The administration is locked in lawsuits with California, Maine, and Minnesota.

Minnesota made the first move in its fight — it sued the Trump administration in April over the transgender sports order. Meanwhile, the Education Department is investigating Minnesota after a trans-identifying male softball player’s shutout pitching helped launch his girls’ team to its first state championship.

California, the biggest player throwing its weight around, said it would follow the liberal state’s laws on males in girls’ sports over Trump’s orders. The Education Department found California in violation of Title IX. When California missed the deadline to comply, the Justice Department sued the Golden State, the next step in terminating its federal education funding.

Governor Gavin Newsom has “not only not read the room right, he’s actually not following what both the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause and Title IX’s actual direct text indicate he needs to do,” Perry said.

The Constitution states that federal law — in this case, Title IX — overrides state law.

A similar situation is playing out in Maine.

Governor Janet Mills infamously snapped, “We’ll see you in court,” to Trump when he called her out in person at a February dinner over Maine allowing males in girls’ sports.

“Good, I’ll see you in court,” Trump told her. “That should be a real easy one.”

The Education Department later found Maine in violation of Title IX over its sports policy, and the Justice Department has sued the state, seeking to end its funding.

The Education Department is also investigating Massachusetts and Oregon over transgender sports policies, as well as the odd school district here and there — Chicago Public Schools, the Jefferson County district in the Denver area, several Connecticut school districts, and Saratoga Springs, New York, which made a show of defying Trump’s executive order disallowing boys to participate in girls’ sports, reaffirming “its unwavering commitment to providing a safe, inclusive, and high-quality education for every student.”

Red states are not immune to such defiance either.

The Education Department is investigating four Kansas school districts for allowing male students in girls’ sports and bathrooms, and hiding students’ transgender identities from parents.

A slew of other blue states have pushed back directly as well, some explicitly telling their schools to ignore Trump’s orders, including New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington state.

“What I would say is, follow state law, follow state law, and then, if you’re not sure, follow state law,” state Superintendent Chris Reykdal told a Spokane area district school board that expressed concern over Trump’s executive order.

Other states, including Colorado, Delaware, Connecticut, Vermont, Hawaii, and Washington, D.C., still have transgender education policies in place.

All of those states and more signed onto a lawsuit opposing Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity, and inclusion ideologies in schools, which includes transgender ideology.

“Unfortunately, it seems to me that a lot of these blue state governors don’t have very good attorneys,” Perry said.

She predicted that the California and Maine lawsuits will eventually end up at the Supreme Court.

“They’re more inclined to take up state lawsuits like this because there are two different interpretations of long-standing federal law,” she said.

Perry noted that last summer, the Supreme Court agreed to block the Biden administration’s radical new interpretation of Title IX, which included gender identity, in 26 states. All nine justices agreed the plaintiffs were entitled to preliminary injunctions.

“I think it was a pretty good indication that once they get the case on the merits, people like Gavin Newsom and Governor Janet Mills are going to be roundly disappointed by exactly how it ends up,” Perry said.

This month, a saga unfolded when five northern Virginia school districts stubbornly clung to their transgender policies, which allow boys in girls’ bathrooms.

The school districts for Loudoun County, Fairfax County, Arlington County, Prince William County, and Alexandria City all announced last week that they would not be changing their policies after the Education Department found them in violation of Title IX.

Loudoun County Public Schools, which became an early flashpoint in the transgender debate after a sexual assault in the girls’ bathroom by a boy in a dress, took the lead in defying the Trump administration. A few days before the deadline, the board voted 6-3 to keep its policy. The other four Virginia districts followed suit with similar announcements.

The Education Department has said it will begin the process of pulling federal education funding from the five Virginia school districts, which receive over $50 million and serve nearly 400,000 students.

“The Virginia districts will have to defend their embrace of radical gender ideology over ensuring the safety of their students,” an Education Department spokesperson said.

While all this was going on, two Loudoun County high school boys were also suspended and found guilty of sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination for questioning why a girl was changing in the boys’ locker room. Their parents are fighting the decision.

Parents did get a win in Loudoun County last month when the district backed down on its pronoun policy after several teachers sued. Loudoun was also previously forced to give a physical education teacher his job back after he was suspended for speaking out against the pronoun policy.

Not every school district flouting the Trump administration is doing it so loudly.

More than 21,000 schools at one point followed a policy to hide children’s transgender identities from parents, according to Defending Education’s database.

Many never changed those transgender policies and are hoping to fly under the radar.

Corey DeAngelis, a prominent school choice advocate, explained that enforcing Trump’s executive orders on thousands of individual local districts has proved to be an unwieldy task.

“Top-down orders aimed at rooting out gender ideology from our schools are welcome developments. They’re a step in the right direction,” DeAngelis told The Daily Wire. “But they are not efficient, because rogue public school employees will continue to skirt the law behind closed doors, and enforcement can prove to be very difficult.”

“We’ve seen the same problem with states banning concepts like Critical Race Theory,” DeAngelis said, noting that public school administrators in red states have been caught on video admitting that they ignored diversity, equity, and inclusion bans.

“It’s a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. That’s exactly why we also need school choice,” he said. “If families get a whiff of something wrong happening in their child’s school … they should be able to vote with their feet to schools that align with their values.”

Parents who wish to keep their children in their public school districts should remain vigilant, Perry said. Thankfully, there is “intense interest” among Defending Education’s 375 parent groups across the country in getting transgender school policies rescinded, she said.

“I would recommend to parents that they need not sit on their laurels and say this is a mission-accomplished administration, but to actually ask hard questions of their local school board,” Perry said. “Will trans-identified males be allowed in their daughter’s bathrooms or on their daughter’s sports teams? Will locker rooms be opened up under gender neutrality?”

“They need to be diligent in enforcing their rights,” she concluded.