Pamela Anderson’s Love Story exposes a sex symbol with substance
From pin-up to punchline, Pamela Anderson’s ability to laugh off the losers and lousy treatment she has endured since the late 1980s turns out to be the most shocking thing about her.
There are two popular threads running through television (and reality) right now – real estate, and redemption arcs for women wronged by the world.
In the middle of this Venn diagram of entertainment and the chattering classes is the Playboy Mansion, where the foundations for these scenes were laid.
This is a tale about two Playmates. Two different paths. Two extremely different productions.
Firstly, Pamela Anderson. A name that, for the majority of her career, has been less “up in lights” and more of a punchline for male late-night TV hosts with God complexes. A damned woman who, you get the sense, could still be just another bad boyfriend away from going full Grey Gardens on her tiny island compound after enduring years of abuse at the hands of peers, criminals and streaming services.
The other, Hugh Hefner’s former live-in girlfriend Kendra Wilkinson, has just come to the realisation “we’re no longer selling sex”. The 37-year-old divorced mother of two is now pivoting to a more lucrative career, flogging $15m houses in LA. Condos are the new centrefolds and the prices (and decor) are ruder than anything you’ll see in a “men’s magazine” these days.
Getting naked for Playboy was something Anderson did after she was discovered at a football game in her early 20s in Vancouver. From there came a modelling career. Then LA, where she burst onto the scene like The Birth of Venus, had Botticelli been a cosmetic surgeon from Beverly Hills.
Anderson felt “free” getting her kit off for Hugh Hefner’s publication. Having been molested by a babysitter as a child, then raped at 12 by a 25-year-old man, she chose to punish her self and self-esteem during her formative years. Instead of speaking up about the horror she endured, showing off her new assets was her way of reclaiming her agency, it also landed her the role of CJ alongside David Hasselhoff on Baywatch.
Documentaries about public figures, especially cult-like celebrities, is a genre that is self-aware. It knows that to make a splash and debut like a rocket it needs to peel back layers. Pamela, A Love Story, does so like a toddler attacking a mango on a 35-degree day.
Anderson participated in the show by giving her eldest son, Brandon Lee (who has a producing credit), access to her “complete archive” – an entire room of journals, diaries and home videos. One particular form of the latter, we learn, caused her so much pain and anxiety it ultimately led to the demise of her relationship with Motley Crue star Tommy Lee.
The pair were the victims of the most egregious act of “revenge porn” when their racy home videos were stolen from a locked safe and distributed on DVD and the early iterations of the internet in 1995. Anderson was a new mum at the time. Court orders to stop the circulation never eventuated due to the stress the hearings took on her. She and Lee never received any compensation. Anderson’s career wilted; Lee became lauded as a rock god by a new generation.
Despite them marrying on a beach in Mexico, drinking “chi chis” four days after meeting, the pair were hopelessly devoted to each other and crazy in love. They were heavy on the crazy. Lee’s temper and jealousy spiralled so severely he got angry at her for kissing her co-stars. Their union ended when he was sent to jail for six months on domestic violence charges for kicking her as she held their newborn son, Dylan.
Given Anderson was derided and judged, unjustly and incorrectly for most of her time in the spotlight, critics and fans in the documentary get a glimpse of what she values and how she has consistently moved through a world that has ogled and laughed at her.
She’s been married five times yet claims she’s only really loved “the father of my children” (Lee, yes, even despite the abuse and emotional carnage he left in his wake). However, she would say vows again tomorrow. The viewer gets the sense Anderson is not craving intimacy, she just wants a “romantic life”. She is someone who loves love – in all its iterations.
Maybe her secret elixir is not synthetic, but the ability to forgive and laugh off the losers and lousy treatment she has endured since the late 1980s.
Her activism on animal rights has been a source of inspiration, and she was influential before the age of the “influencer”. Pamela, A Love Story, details how she wore the body blows about her body in order to have access to platforms like late-night TV shows and movie roles for causes she has long cared about. A case in point is an autograph signing event where she scribbled her name then asked her fans to pay it forward by signing a petition for PETA. She also, somehow, negotiated with Russian President Vladimir Putin, resulting in a ban on importing seal pelts from Canada.
She only agreed to participate on screen of Pamela, A Love Story, if her son and director Ryan White promised not to show her the finished product.
Anderson – a natural sex kitten (despite the implants) with piercing blue eyes (that now require prescription glasses), a flowing mane of icy blonde hair and a body that defies gravity and logic for most mortals let alone other 55-year-old mothers – was interviewed wearing no make up and with minimal grooming (yet still looks arresting), but she drew the line at narrating portions of the 90-minute expose, as reading her diary entries aloud was deemed too private. And too painful.
These experiments in putting celebrities under the microscope do well if we learn something about the subject. Anderson is hilarious, has an uncanny ability to still be so trusting and is quite obviously an adored mother – her two sons feature in the show comforting her. They are blown away by her achievements and disgusted by the treatment she endured.
It must be hard for someone who has been pigeonholed, seemingly her entire adult life, to break free. Anderson has done it and continues to live with her heart and mind wide open.
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From all the wholesomeness of Pamela, A Love Story comes her successor in the world of Hef and Playboy – Kendra Wilkinson. Wilkinson made her name in the mid-2000s as being one of three live-in girlfriends of the smut king. She made her name in reality TV and has now returned to the format of television that built her up as a buxom beauty who is as shallow as a puddle. The only thing that has changed over the years is that she now needs a job.
Kendra Sells Hollywood follows her trying to sell homes in Bel Air. “I used to party in these hills,” she says. Competing with two other women for the attention of her boyfriend back in the day has done nothing to prepare her for the bitchy, bemusing world of real estate.
For the show – which surprisingly has been greenlit for a second season – the hapless Wilkinson joins a premier agency where no one wants her cutting their lunch or their commission. Despite her emissions – she farts in front of her co-workers – there is no chemistry between the cast of Kendra Sells Hollywood. There’s no plot, no shocking twists nor any Married At First Sight drama to even be repulsed by. Paint drying is more compelling. However it is the perfect tonic following a night of one too many gin and tonics.
While Anderson is a Jessica Rabbit personified, Wilkinson – a younger former Playboy Bunny – has morphed into the live action version of Bugs Bunny.
Pamela, A Love Story is streaming now on Netflix.
Kendra Sells Hollywood is streaming now on Binge.
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