She’s known as being THE Hollywood go-to for sculpting killer arms (as in those of Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow) and now Tracy Anderson has a new gig to add to her resume: the face of Ecco Bella.
If you haven’t heard of the brand, stop everything and educate yourself. It’s been around for almost 25 years and it’s very, very serious about truly green beauty—but not in a hippie-dippie kind of way. The formulas are luxe, wholesome and smell amazing. The makeup is made from flower waxes and gives just as good of a color payoff as some of the most popular brands out there, without the bad stuff. The bottom line: It’s natural, it’s organic and it really works.
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We sat down with the 41-year-old global fitness expert and mother of two to get the inside scoop on everything she loves about the line and why she partnered with them.
On Natural Beauty
“I really believe in taking care of yourself in a natural way and I really believe in women looking beautiful in a natural way. I was sent the line to try and I actually sat on it for a really long time without opening it. One day I ran out of everything else I was using, went into the bag and washed my face with the cleanser and tested out the other products.”
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Her reaction? “I was shocked by how good it was! The Day Cream is like the most amazing primer; it feels like it should cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars. I knew I wanted to work with them.”
As Anderson admits, she is not “an easy one” to work with—and she’s pretty picky when it comes to who (and what) she will partner with. “A lot of people say they organic and they are not really organic. They just use the word as a selling point, but [owner Sally Malanga] really put so much thought, time and research into creating these products. The brand has been a ‘little lost star’ for so many years. I am excited to raise awareness for the brand because I really, truly believe in it.”
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Some of her faves: The Natural Mist-On Toner and Vitamin Spray (she uses it while working out or when she’s flying a lot) and the Natural Age Antidote Day Skin Cream (that’s her “obsession,” a product she says creates a “crazy, light-diffusing sheen”). It’s this mix that Anderson attributes to really helping calm down her sensitive, breakout-prone skin.
On Her Biggest Skin-Care Challenge
But beyond the occasional flare-up, Anderson says her biggest skin care challenge is actually cystic acne. “I won’t take Accutane, but so many of my friends in the entertainment industry constantly live on a low dose of it. I won’t do that; it’s not an option for me in terms of health. There’s just no way. [My acne] was so bad for me at one point that I started to take a double dose of OptiZinc each day for a year. You can order it on Amazon. It’s a more natural approach to fixing adult acne. From an internal perspective, that really helped a lot, but I still had pigment issues from so many years of acne.”
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“It’s hard; I felt like I was in this weird category. You’re aging, and you need to think about tackling that, yet you’re suffering from a skin problem that you associate with teenagers. When I started using these products, the results were more miraculous than a Proactive commercial, and with no chemicals. There’s a simplicity to them. We put too much stuff on ourselves. Less really is more, especially when it comes to beauty.”
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Fast-forward to today: “I just watched the trailer of the video that will go out of me washing my face and I couldn’t believe how good my skin looked, and I was washing my face! It’s no retouching and the lightest makeup I have EVER worn for a photo shoot in the history of my career. I feel like I can go out of the house with little-to-no makeup on now—I haven’t done that since I was a child.”
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“I am a makeup junkie. I used to put on full makeup before I started a class and I would sweat it off. I was always a woman who never felt like she could not be wearing makeup, for whatever reason. To be 41 and to have that for the first time ever is amazing.”
On Celebrity Standards
And as for that whole celeb-fitness thing? “We live in a really denatured world right now. We need everyone to shift and change it. It’s so toxic. The amount of celebrity that’s dangled in our faces—there’s so much of that to the point no one feels like they can own their own ‘beauty.’ Everyone always wants to look like someone else or have someone else’s lifestyle. To me, celebrity needs to be more about everyone being celebrated in a really beautiful way.”
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On Wellness and Exercise
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Anderson’s advice: Take the steps you can afford to take—first and foremost, for your health. “Maybe you can’t afford to go into one of my gyms, but you can afford to stream a workout. Maybe you can’t do the advanced class, but you can do the beginner. Maybe you can’t afford to buy all organic produce, but you can buy lettuce and the more porous things. Start by making smart and mindful choices.”
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“And you have to exercise. We all have to. We have to deal with the stress of all of the different things that are imposed upon us every single day and you can’t separate your physical self from your emotional self from your intellectual self. You have to move your physical self to process all of that. It’s much more than working out to gain definition and lose weight—it’s essential to your mental and physical well-being.”