I lived in an imaginary world. I certainly don’t blame my parents for my upbringing. I’m grateful because I gained a lot of good qualities along with the bad. I’m a survivor.
– Pamela Anderson
A household name and a cautionary tale. Regardless of where you first saw her name, whether it was on the cover of Playboy or in the credits of Baywatch, by the time her sex tape was stolen and leaked, you were well aware of her presence in the ever-evolving media. Whether you wanted to or not.
Expeditiously dubbed something of an unhinged icon, Pamela Anderson’s career and overall worth, not only as a celebrity but as a human, has been often defined by her affair with B-list rock star Tommy Lee, and the guessing game played by male talk show hosts of whether her boobs were real or not. While these caricatures that pop culture has drawn for her are still apparent today, the landscape has shifted from the starkly insensitive ‘90s when Pamela rose to fame. Her 2023 Netflix documentary, Pamela, a love story, delves into the idol’s childhood, passions, and struggles from Pamela’s point of view.
Hers is a point of view that happens to encompass the feminist tidal wave proudly ashoring the patriarchal core of modern media. For the first time, Pamela is able to tell her story and discuss what it means to be unapologetically sexual in the eyes of the world. While it is undeniable that sex sells, so does emotional substance. Not every woman chooses to capitalize on her appearance the way Pamela Anderson does, but why shame a person for taking control of their body and doing what they want with it? Especially without hearing their side of the story?
Pamela Anderson has been my role model since I was a teenager. Similar to her, I grew up in a small town by the beach, except my roots are in Maine and hers are on an island off the coast of Vancouver. The summer after I turned 16, I bought this bright red, one-piece bathing suit from Victoria’s Secret because I wanted to start training to be a lifeguard like all the cool kids from my town. It was my mom who told me that it looked like the swimsuit Pamela Anderson wore on Baywatch. She also showed me a YouTube video of Pamela’s infamous slow-motion run. I was instantly obsessed.
I thought she was a beautiful representation of what it meant to be strong and feminine. I was already modeling by then, and my mom was my biggest fan, regardless of how outlandish my dreams seemed. A special bond was formed between my mom and me. She was the one driving me to castings and jobs hours away. She was the one waiting in line with me until my name was called to audition. I absolutely loved life in front of the camera.
Pamela swam in the Pacific and I in the Atlantic, but it was beach and salt water nonetheless.
So many people are hopping on the bandwagon of performative praise for Pamela Anderson now that she’s told her own story. Meanwhile, I always felt like I couldn’t relate to a person more.
In particular, being brought up in the Catholic school system attached shame to the female body in ways no child should ever be exposed to. One of my earliest memories of being sexualized by an adult happened in a schoolyard full of kids. I was wearing a v-neck T-shirt on a non-uniform day. My fifty-year-old teacher told me to yank up my shirt because I was showing too much cleavage. I was 13, in the seventh grade. I thought there was something wrong with who I was. My face was hot and my tears were angry as I shakily cried to my mom after school that day. I just wanted to play during recess. I just wanted to be a fucking kid.
Hearing Pamela Anderson speak for herself in her documentary makes me realize we are even more alike than I originally thought. She said of her first Playboy photoshoot, “That was the first time I felt like I’d broken free of something.” It felt like a strange form of validation that made me feel less alone. At my first photoshoot (though it wasn’t for Playboy) I had a similar experience. I felt like I was in the right place for the first time in my life the moment I sat down in the makeup chair on set. I think that’s why I feel so close to my career as a model and will defend the profession unwaveringly until the day I die. As cut-throat and isolating as it can be, it gave me my sense of self. When I started modeling, I stopped apologizing for the way that I look.
The world was as quick to judge Pamela Anderson for her breast size and sex tape as they were to watch it. And though the controversy around the sex tape stems from whether or not it was stolen or purposefully leaked, I still find it unsurprising that it took her own documentary to plead to the same audience that the tape was—in fact—stolen.
Though I believe that the tape was stolen, who cares if it wasn’t? So what if they leaked it? Women should not be shamed for being sexual. People believed Tommy when he said the tape was stolen, but did not believe Pamela. She had to defend herself ten times over. She is still getting shamed, despite her steadfast defense, while many men wish they were Tommy Lee for all of the wrong reasons. I feel privileged to see so much of myself in someone at the forefront of speaking up.