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Feminine Fame and the Power of Voice: A Love, Pamela Review

The life experience of an absurdly beautiful woman is a unique one. One we come to know through photos on magazine covers, clips in films, the words of the men who desire her. We’re familiar with the sex symbol as a tragic figure, and as a silent one. Pamela Anderson’s memoir offers the opportunity to hear the whole unfiltered voice of the empathetic, insightful, passionate, poetic woman inside the sex-icon. Part memoir and part poetry collection, Pamela’s unique spirit shines from the pages of  Love, Pamela – and shows us why she’s a woman we keep watching.

Pamela’s memoir is an insightful look into her life, from her humble childhood in small town Canada to her Broadway debut as Chicago’s Roxie Hart. The part of Pamela Anderson that the world is comfortable with, her body, her sexuality, her vivaciousness – is only a fragment of a powerful and complicated woman. From her reign as pop culture sex symbol, to tabloid fodder, to having a tape of her and her husband having sex stolen from her home and released to the world, often Anderson’s image and the narrative surrounding her life was outside of her control. She understands better than anyone that people see you the way they want to, and it will rarely be the truth. With that understanding, Pamela has had the ability to weather mistreatment, exploitation, and disrespect, because throughout it all, she never lost sight of who she was. She writes about her romances, her modeling, and her writing in a way that is both wistful and frank, and reverberates with the spirit of an artist. 

A true natural beauty and longtime fashion muse, Pamela’s freedom of self expression and honest approach to her style has evolved and grown with her throughout the decades. You might know her from her role on “Baywatch”, her modeling in Playboy, or more recently in the Paris Fashion Week headlines where she has been going makeup free. In a celebrity culture rife with retouching and blurring and tucking, Pamela still walks her own path.

There’s a temptation to look at a beautiful woman and say her life must be fabulous and easy because of the way that she’s desired. But the reality of the Hollywood machine chewing up and spitting out blonde beauties from humble beginnings, like Marilyn Monroe and Britney Spears, is a story we know all too well. Pamela’s story doesn’t end in ruin. At fifty-five she’s happily living in her home town in Canada, having raised two boys, and she’s sitting down to write the story of her life. Her life begs the question: how did she survive?

Anderson describes finding refuge in her journals and in seeking the company of artists and “wild people”, people who she felt understood her and she could be herself around. Armored with a strong sense of self, books and her pen, and a deep feminine strength, she never lost her voice, whether the world heard it or not. 

 Pamela’s voice, like her, is one of a kind. She’s a natural lifelong storyteller. She describes herself as a dreamer, and as someone who learned to live in fantasy at a young age. She writes honestly and unpretentiously. The book is interspersed with stanzas of her poetry that give the reader space to slow down and breathe in the midst of the rapid twists and turns of her life. Her poetry is simultaneously dreamy and sincere. Reading the chapters, it feels like you’re sat across from her at lunch while she tells you her story. Reading her poetry, it feels like you took a nap beside her in the sun, and her dreams came to co habitate with yours.

I picked up Love, Pamela because I watched a Variety interview where she describes how agents and publishers didn’t believe that she could write a book, and she says “I’ve been a writer my whole life / I know I can / I like proving people wrong”. That was enough for me to want to read her book. I saw myself in her at that moment, and I think any writer and any young woman could. 

 Reading her story as a young woman, feminine wisdom pours from the pages. I want to send this book to women in my life. I want to talk to my mom about it. I want to scream from the rooftops that people should know her story. We have so little of the voices of unencumbered and vivacious and sexual women, because for some reason we have such a hard time believing a woman can be sexy and of substance. Sex makes the world go round. It’s the creation of life, it’s the expression of love. It’s the most substantive thing that people do. So why is it so difficult to look at a bombshell in a bathing suit and believe that there is more to her than her body? Why do we think that because all we think when we look at someone is sex, that that’s all there is? 

Pamela Anderson’s life is a product of its time, and as a sex symbol, learning how the world treats her shows a lot about how we think about women and how we think about sex. There are a lot of things to take away from Love, Pamela. Not least of all is the message that societal attitudes towards beauty and sex matter and can shape your life in significant ways, but the most important attitude is the one that you hold. Pamela never stopped breaking convention, she never stopped dreaming, and she never stopped being sexy. 

A true natural beauty and longtime fashion muse, Pamela’s freedom of self expression and honest approach to her style has evolved and grown with her throughout the decades. Recently Pamela has been making waves going makeup free at events such as Paris Fashion Week. In a celebrity culture rife with constant retouching and blurring and an obsession with perfection, Pamela still walks her own path.

The release of her memoir coincides with the release of Pam and Tommy, a Netflix show about her marriage to Tommy Lee Jones, the sex tape that was stolen from their home and released to the world, and the ensuing scandal and media circus. The project didn’t involve or consult Pamela, and she has not watched it. Even as this incredibly painful chapter of her life is being dragged up again and profited from, Love, Pamela isn’t a memoir written with something to prove or a record to set straight. It’s the memoir of a woman who’s story is her own, no matter what anyone’s heard – or seen.

 Many sex symbols before her have never had the opportunity to share the story of their lives. Her story is filled with sorrow and with glamor, and with a powerful message about what people can take from you and what they can’t.