Tamron Hall Says She Wakes Up 'Looking Like a Black Bart Simpson'

Sharon Kanter
Updated

Tamron Hall is all about being honest, especially when it comes to beauty.

The host of Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall, who left her anchoring role on the Today show earlier this year, revealed her look isn’t always as put together as it seems. “I live in a TV world where easily you can think my life is glamorous, but I know I wake up looking like a black Bart Simpson,” the journalist, 46, joked during a panel at Redbook’s 2017 MVP Beauty Awards launch party (she was a celebrity judge for the magazine’s awards this year).

“It takes a lot of things to make me look that way,” she said.

But she admitted that she loves beauty and not only enjoys experimenting with new products — “send them to me to test anytime!” she boasted on stage — she also loves trying out new looks, even if they do not always go the way she planned.

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“I don’t know if I ever said this in public, but I once had this shaved blonde mohawk, many years ago,” she said to a crowd that audibly gasped and cheered. These days, her trial-and-error process is a little more subtle. “I wore a beige [nail] color for years on the TODAY show. I like experimenting, I like having fun, but in the end, if you like it, I love it, and that’s what you have to remember.”

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One thing she’ll never do when it comes to beauty? Grow her signature pixie cut long. During the panel, she told an elaborate story about how she felt pressured, early in her career, to grow her out her short hairstyle to satisfy not herself, but her viewers, who had commented that her hair was too short. Well, she did, and she hated it — and that was the end of that. “Once I cut it off, I instantly felt like myself again,” she said. “I could get a weave if I wanted to! But I will not grow it out again.”

“For me, overcoming that was not only empowering to me — I have nieces, a 7-year-old, an 11-year-old and a 17-year-old, and I tell them about this stuff. To me, that was the big thing.”