Pamela Anderson’s documentary

I went into this Netflix film with a lot of skepticism. The rampant '90s and 00's over-sexualization of women (especially white / blonde / thin / Christian) was hard enough to live through. I don't know what I was expecting to hear but I support women taking back control of their narratives (think TMZ / Perez Hilton era of degrading women).

Content warning and spoilers.

Pamela Anderson had a destabilized childhood. She watched her parents fight violently and her mother trauma bond with her abusive father. She was molested by a female babysitter as a young child (she wished the babysitter would die, and almost miraculously, she does). Anderson was raped at age 12 by an older man. She recounts all this with a light but stoic tone. My heart goes out to her.

While she doesn't get into her overt exploitation by the Hollywood machine (she doesn't problematize Playboy or creeptastic Hugh Hefner) we see images of her body as though she is literal meat. You know those pictures of cows in butcher shops where the animal is subdivided into body parts to butcher and eat? There are images of her like that. (Meanwhile she, like me, is vegan. The link between anti-female exploitation and animal agriculture is for another post.)

From child molestation to rape to exploitation as a young woman... only to be physically abused by husband Tommy Lee after she birthed two of their children. Thankfully she leaves definitively and unequivocally without tolerating the abuse. But you see by the end how much this relationship costs her. (No vetting ever took place; she married him within 4 days of meeting.)

The entire film is a profile in American female degradation and my chest hurt after.