By Helen Elliott
Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe, Pamela Anderson. Three unnatural blondes who have in common an unusual quirk: to set eyes on them causes instantaneous lust. Generally, but not always, in men. It’s quite specific in these three women. The reaction is because of some element that can be described as kittenish. You couldn’t, for example, call Ursula Andress or Jane Fonda kittenish.
Speaking of kittens, Anderson’s father once drowned a bag of kittens in front of his small daughter who had just seen them born. It speaks well of her that she can still speak well of her brutish, drunken father.
Pamela Anderson at a screening of her documentary in New York this month and, right, the cover of Love, Pamela.Credit: Getty Images
In fact, she supports him and her inadequate – the kindest word – mother in the style they’ve become accustomed to since their kittenish daughter caught the eye of Hugh “Playboy” Hefner. Anderson writes that her partying at the Playboy mansion was “innocent for debauchery”.
Perhaps you have not heard of or, like me, dismissed Pamela Anderson? The kittenish Canadian was a star on the 1990s American TV show, Baywatch. This involved tremendous chest-value sprinting across sand in a red bathing suit and her in a tremendous chest-improving bout of surgery.
Anderson is now more than midway through life and has decided to write the story of her life simultaneously as Netflix has filmed a doco. A bit like Harry and Meghan. We are watching the evolution of a nascent genre: book and doco, springing from reality TV, enabled by streaming, and guaranteed by a public addiction to celebrity.
Anderson has much in common with the two ex-royals. She’s very smart, she’s compassionate, she’s full of empathy, she loves dogs, beautiful men and children, she’s curious about everything; in short, like them, she’s easy to like. Her life, lived to the hilt and beyond, is full of interest.
Pamela Anderson with former husband Tommy Lee in 1995. The couple divorced in 1998.Credit: AP
This is not the usual celebratory memoir underwritten by a ghost. Every word is hers. And unlike Harry and Meghan, Pamela has not had to filter anything. Or if she does, it is with kindness and love.
She even speaks with love of Tommy Lee, who was a drummer in a heavy metal band. “Tommy was the man of my dreams – so handsome … covered in a thoughtful story of tattoos … Being with him I felt complete.”
They famously married (she wore a bikini) after knowing one another for four days. They quickly had two boys who were and remain the joy of her life. But she (famously) left him after he was violent towards her. They had been married for three years but then had an on/off relationship for many years as they tried to parent their boys in a better way than they had been parented.
Anderson is an autodidact and a poet. She reads everything in sight, remembering things and putting ideas together, so she can make something greater out of her chaotic life. Her comment that her life with Lee was like a Fellini film is exact.
Of course, she has the same trouble as Bardot and Monroe had - men, who suspended in the lust-dream were unable to show any interest in who the kittenish creature was in her head. Remember that Monroe liked Arthur Miller because he read books and wrote plays, but it turns out she was too brainy for him.
Love, Pamela is the story of woman’s growing into herself and having to learn to pay attention to her own needs and not the needs, or fantasies of others. She grew up wanting to please, wanting everyone to like her or love her and had no early mentors. Then she became the sex kitten and began to realise that whatever it was that she had was more powerful than anything in the world because it was a devastation to the powerful men who ran it.
She has put her immense celebrity to use for good, becoming an activist for the causes of animals, left political causes and the environment. She has badgered Vladimir Putin and is a constant friend and champion of Julian Assange. Anderson tried to get then Prime Minister Scott Morrison interested in his release. Cringingly, he offered to meet her if he could “bring a few buddies”.
Her book, despite the culturally loaded sentimentalism, reminded me how wonderful and surprising life is. And now a woman I dismissed as two puffy lips and implants turns out to be a woman I’d love to know.
Love, Pamela by Pamela Anderson is published by Headline, $34.99.
The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from books editor Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.