While most audiences know Pamela Anderson as the buxom blonde bombshell on Baywatch, her memoir Love, Pamela proves that version of her to be incredibly one-sided and completely devoid of her intelligence, humor, and compassion.
Born on tiny Vancouver Island to parents who struggled for years to assume the kind of responsibility and stability children need to feel safe, Pamela grew up surrounded by the refuge of the natural world and devoted to the animals in the wilderness near her home. The memoir is told in the first person as a reflection of all that occurred in her life, but it is punctuated by thin columns of her stunning and sharp poetry shapes the emotional backbone of the book. Aware of her body early on because of what it could do—run, climb, play—she was taken advantage of and assaulted by someone who should have been a trusted caretaker. This early harm informs much of her future, but she is quick to point out that she is not a victim.
By the age of twenty-two, she had been discovered by Playboy and the whirlwind of fame and high-profile relationships thrust her into the chaotic and terrifying world of the paparazzi. Her humanity and personhood were nullified by the press, who publicized a stolen sex tape featuring her and her then-husband, Tommy Lee of Motley Crue. The book doesn’t spend much time on the tape, but it is clear that Lee will always be the love of her life and their two children, Brandon and Dylan, are the center of her world.
If you’re interested in learning more about this brilliant woman, whose intelligence has been wrongly overshadowed by her beauty, run to read Love, Pamela.