Beauty

At 88, Jane Fonda Is Still the Very Definition of Beauty Goals

December 21, 2025

Photo: Silver Screen Collection

“We need to revise how we think about aging,” Jane Fonda, 88 today, said once. “The old paradigm was: You’re born, you peak at midlife, and then you decline into decrepitude. Looking at aging as ascending a staircase, you gain wellbeing, spirit, soul, wisdom, the ability to be truly intimate and a life with intention.” Wise words to live by, and live by them she has—Fonda’s zest for life has endured well into her ninth decade, and she has long demonstrated that beauty isn’t merely about what you look like, but also what you put into the world.

That said, the actor, activist, and general icon also, always, looks next-level good. Consider her buttery blonde, babetastic bouffant in 1968’s Barbarella and the major transformation to a chestnut brown shag in 1971’s Klute, or the flippy curls of 1980 movie On Golden Pond. Of course, her iconic 1970 mugshot (mug!) came with a determined mullet—it was a political evolution for Fonda, who was traveling home from an anti-Vietnam War speaking engagement when she was picked up by police for drug smuggling (she had vitamins in her bag), but it was also marked by a punky beauty evolution.

“Hair had ruled me for many years,” Fonda wrote in her book. “The men in my life liked it long and blonde.” Now part-mullet, part-shag, her look was punk, brunette, a little unhinged, and entirely untameable—the kind of haircut that could never be neatly tied up in a bouncy ponytail or piled into an evening updo; the kind of haircut that would never earn you a desk job. Fonda was in her mid-30s, entrenched in civil rights activism, and horrified by the atrocities of the Vietnam War. “Perhaps I used to hide behind [my hair],” she wrote. It was at that moment, when realizing she had become afraid of much bigger things than of being herself, she met hairstylist Paul McGregor and gave him a simple demand: “Do something.” The unruly haircut was not for Fonda’s fans, boyfriends, husbands, or career—it was for her. It was also the cut she sported when she won her first Oscar.

Fonda also remains a fan of the aerobic-style workout (she is the OG fit-fluencer, thanks to her VHS days in the ’80s), which democratized fitness in the ’80s for women, and turned aerobics into a global trend: “Feel the burn!” Also still today, Fonda is never anything less than glamour personified when she hits the red carpet, and commitedly flys the flag for silver hair. Most recently, Fonda received the Impact Entertainment Visionaries Award at the Impact + Profit 25 Conference in Los Angeles; her silver curled bob perfectly framed her face.

Here, Vogue takes a look at some of Jane Fonda’s best beauty moments over the years.