Nearly a year after Hulu released their original show, Pam & Tommy, former Playboy Playmate actress and current activist, Pamela Anderson, has finally broken her silence and spoken her truth with her autobiography Love, Pamela, released on January 31, 2023.
Anderson’s book is an insightful and easy read. After the 2022 release of, Pam & Tommy, starring Lily James as Pamela Anderson and Sebastian Stan as Tommy Lee, Anderson wanted to take back the narrative that was fed to the world. Love, Pamela does this and more.
She includes some of her own poetry in between different sections of her book. It’s nothing professional, but it does add another personal, refreshing element to her story.
Anderson takes readers through her life, beginning as a child in Ladysmith, Canada. She grew up in a poor and sometimes troubling family before being noticed at a BC Lions football game on the big screen. However, Anderson didn’t think of herself as beautiful, saying “My friends made me stand up, and all I could think of when I saw myself up on the big screen was that I didn’t like the way I looked.”
She was soon picked up by Playboy and her career really took off once she moved to California. Anderson describes her time at Playboy better than anyone else can, and doesn’t write much that is negative about it.
A definite highlight is her juicy celebrity gossip, telling stories about being flashed by actor Tim Allen and walking in on actor Jack Nicholson with two women at the Playboy mansion.
One of the saddest aspects of the book is when she discusses the numerous times she has had people force themselves onto her without her consent, starting with a babysitter when she was a child.
The part of her story that many people believe they know best is the stolen private tape which consisted of Anderson and her husband at the time, Tommy Lee. The tape was stolen from their home and was used heavily against Anderson. She writes of lawyers using her Playboy career against her saying that she “didn’t care about being nude publicly.” It was released without either Anderson or Lee’s consent, and was the beginning of the end of their marriage. Despite recounting the troubles they faced, Anderson included Lee in her acknowledgments saying, “Thank you for just being you, and for being the catalyst of everything good in my life.”
Lee and Anderson share two sons, Brandon Thomas Lee and Dylan Jagger Lee, together. Anderson, as clearly shown in her book, loves her two sons dearly, and they have a close family dynamic. “A special thank-you to my beautiful children, Brandon and Dylan Lee. This was your idea. And I’m truly honored, sweethearts,” Anderson wrote. “I was hesitant, but you knew I needed to take back my life story, our story.”
She also talks heavily of her activism efforts including her work with PETA and The Pamela Anderson Foundation. She is a vegan with a passion for animal, human, and environmental rights. The book does not follow the typical celebrity bragging to make themselves feel good about their good works, as Anderson writes heavily of her belief of helping out local causes in the places she visits because people should, not necessarily just because they could.
Most of us aren’t born with looks good enough for “pretty privilege” and probably will not live the lifestyle Anderson does. Her looks took her a long way in the beginning, but she uses her platform to enact change and speak out. This doesn’t mean her book is unrelatable, as The Daily Beast said. Her book may not be relatable by her celebrity status, but her admissions of shyness and lack of self confidence are too many. And not many of us are so ready to admit it to the world.
Pamela Anderson finally took back the narrative to her life and did it with a sense of grace, self-worth, and love. Her book is important for anyone who thinks they can judge a book by its cover, or a videotape by its contents.
