To a generation raised on ’90s MTV, Daisy Fuentes reigned as the cool, stylish big sister with the dream job — and killer bikini collection — that everyone envied. At 59, the TV host and model — who’s built a lifestyle empire over the last 20 years — still radiates that knowing, seen-it-all confidence and spark.

“It’s not easy to navigate through this second act in life,” Fuentes tells me in conversation for Yahoo’s Unapologetically series. “You’ve got to have thick skin. You’ve got to be ready. You’ve got to be ready to shed your old skin and step into your new role.”

One of the challenges of aging: recognizing that there are more years behind her than ahead.

“I’m aware that there are not that many versions [of me] left,” Fuentes says. “That part is really hard — realizing that all those other girls who I was, they don’t exist [anymore]. Who I am right now is really important, and if I don’t get it right, I don’t have that many chances left.”

That awareness keeps her focused on being the best version of herself — as a person and as the businesswoman behind her eponymous brand. It’s also shaped her later-in-life love story with singer Richard Marx, who she married nearly a decade ago; according to Fuentes, the couple don’t have time to argue about “stupid” things. And it helps her tune out the “noise” from the comment section chorus on social media, which she dismisses entirely.

Here’s what she says about why aging gracefully isn’t one-size-fits-all (and why she’s keeping her options open when it comes to plastic surgery).

You made history as MTV’s first Latina VJ in 1993 when representation was scarce. What were some of the challenges you faced early on?

There were misconceptions about who I was and what I was supposed to bring to the table. Everyone I met had a different expectation of who I [should] be as a young Hispanic American woman. At the time, I wasn’t as aware of it, and that may have helped me. Not being aware of my limitations — or of the judgment and personal agendas behind hiring me — made me less self-conscious about what I was doing. It [allowed me] to learn at my own pace and be authentic.

Do you ever rewatch old footage from your MTV era? If so, are you in the moment, or thinking about what was happening in your life at the time?

There’s not a lot of footage from those days — thankfully. Every now and then, someone will tag me in a video of me hosting something or interviewing someone, and I do watch. What’s surprising is how I watch it as if it were somebody else, because it really was. That version of me is 100% somebody else. I don’t see myself in those videos. I mean — we’re going back 25, 30 years. That version of myself hasn’t existed for a long time. It’s another person.

You built one of the longest-running celebrity lifestyle brands at a time when so many others launched and then quickly fizzled. To what do you attribute your success?

A lesson I learned being one of the first was to just take a chance. ... [I thought]: Let me just see what happens. It was the Wild West of branding and licensing in 2003 and 2004 when I started, and we were all learning as we went. It was important for me to seek advice from those who were smarter and more experienced than me in business, and also to make choices that felt authentic to me.

In those days, I was less afraid. I never stopped to think, What if it goes wrong? What will people think? Or, I’m really just supposed to be a model. I’m really just supposed to be a TV host. I’m supposed to stay in my lane. I never even knew what my lane was. I just went in whatever lane felt right. I think a lot of times we, especially as women, put a lot of limitations on ourselves. It’s good to be focused on one thing, but not to the point where you’re blocking better opportunities.

What has this decade allowed you to leave behind?

A lot of self-doubt, second-guessing myself and self-judgment. It’s a work in progress.

A lot of people I’ve talked to for this recently have said that at 50, they “stopped giving a shit.” Is that the case with you?

There’s a lot of that, but I also find that if you’re really curious about yourself — if you’re one of those people who always wants to evolve and keep an open mind — [then you also] start giving a shit about other things you didn’t give a shit about before. Because you don’t want to just go through life completely not caring, right? I care. I care about who I am. I care about many different things, like, What is my legacy? ... I care how I present myself. I still want to show up, and I care about how I show up.

I don’t care about a lot of the silly things. I don’t care that I’m 5 or 10 pounds overweight. I don’t care that I have a little bit of cellulite. I still want to look good, though. I still want to take care of myself. I want to be independent well into my old age, and that’s something serious to care about. So I care about different things.

What’s been the biggest surprise about aging? Mine is seeing my neck on camera. I wish I had started using retinol when I was young and never gone in a tanning booth in the ’90s.

I definitely wish I’d done things differently when I was younger. You have to remember: When I was a teenager, we didn’t [use sunscreen]. We sat on the beach with baby oil. I have spent the majority of my adult life paying to reverse the damage I did.

In 2022, you responded to social media commentary claiming you were “unrecognizable.” You said, “I’m in my 50s now. Besides, you probably don’t look the same way that you did 30 years ago either.” Take us back to that moment.

People still say that a lot: “Oh, she doesn’t look anything like what I remember.” It’s like: You’ve never met me. Also, of course, I don’t look the same. When’s the last time you saw me? Do you remember me from MTV — because, yeah, I definitely don’t look the same. That would be really weird, wouldn’t it?

I don’t know what provokes someone to leave a comment like that on someone’s post. I don’t understand it because these are usually adult women, sometimes grown men. What went so horribly wrong in your life that you feel like that’s OK? It really says more about them than about me, and it’s important to remind ourselves of that. It was important for me to realize: It’s just noise. It doesn’t matter. What matters is how you feel about yourself.

In that same response, you also said, “I haven’t had plastic surgery but, hey, I still might.” Is that still your mindset?

100%. I feel like treatments and options are getting better and better. Every month, we introduce a new technique that’s more effective and less invasive. In a couple of years, who knows what our options are going to be?

In the meantime, I’m doing whatever I feel comfortable doing. I think that aging gracefully is different for everyone. If you think aging gracefully is aging without coloring your hair and without doing Botox or any fine-tuning, then that’s graceful aging for you. If I think that graceful aging for me is looking the best that I can as I go, and that might include Botox and treatments and lasers, then that’s graceful aging for me. It looks different for everyone. Be in tune with yourself and figure out what feels good for you. All this judgment and guilt that we all lay on each other, it’s useless. It’s not real. It’s not the truth. The truth is what works for you.

Whenever you post a swimsuit photo on Instagram, it still generates headlines to this day. What do you think when that happens?

It’s a little surprising because I don’t feel like I look the way I did when I was younger. I don’t think I look horrible. I do my best at staying in decent shape. So in a way, it’s flattering, but in another way, it’s like, What did they expect? Was I supposed to grow a third breast? I don’t understand what they think I’m supposed to look like. It’s just a woman in a swimsuit. So it’s always funny, flattering and weird at the same time.

You’re coming up on your 10th wedding anniversary in December. What has finding love later in life meant to you?

It’s so special. I had given up on that a little bit. I was at a point in my life where I wanted to keep having relationships, because I was always open to that, but I thought that the kind of love that I really wanted — the man who was gonna be the man for me — didn’t exist. So I built my life in the best way possible for myself. I was like, Oh, I always wanted to live on the beach. I bought a beach house for myself. I always wanted to travel to this place, but they say it’s a romantic place. Screw it, I’m going with my girlfriends. I started doing things that I wanted to do for myself with friends, with family.

I still dated, mostly because for me, it has always been important to remember that I’m a woman, and to remember how to flirt — even if I was going on a date with someone who I knew wasn’t going to be a [long-term] romantic partner. I had no agenda. I wasn’t looking to have children. I wasn’t looking to get married. I wasn’t looking for a sugar daddy. I needed nothing from [them] except company.

Just when I felt like I had built this amazing life for myself — and I was dating and having fun — Richard Marx comes along and shows me that person I had been envisioning. He was all of the things that I thought a man needed to be. He pursued me the way I secretly desired to be pursued. He brought my walls down in a way that I didn’t think anybody could.

Meeting somebody later in life, you don’t take things for granted. We don’t have time to argue about stupid things. Yeah, we have disagreements, but they don’t last because we know we don’t have time. We don’t have time for that. We just want to love each other as long as we can.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.