On "Pamela: A Love Story," and the scars we bear in order to be seen

I’m always amazed at the lengths women are expected to go to in order to demonstrate their humanity.

This week, I watched Pamela: A Love Story— a documentary on the life of Pamela Anderson.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. Truth be told, before this documentary I didn’t know much about her, and before her story was stolen from her, I likely wouldn’t have heard it at all.

The documentary was the first time Anderson had been given the chance to tell her story on her own terms, in part because before, no one was actually trying to listen.

Anderson— a former Baywatch babe, Playboy centrefold, and infamous blonde bombshell, was very obviously welcomed with open arms in Hollywood.

She looked like the kind of woman who belonged in magazines, and she certainly walked the part.

But in her words, hiding behind the oozing confidence on the TV screen or magazine covers was a hurt little girl who just wanted to be seen.

I watched in horror as the documentary recounted moments where she was questioned by male TV hosts about her breasts, her sex life, and moments in which she was violated by losing access to videos of intimate moments, and was expected to smile and laugh through it.

She was shamed for finally feeling comfortable in her own skin despite years of feeling exactly the opposite. But all people saw when they looked at her was what they wanted to see.

Anderson shared that she felt a different person come out in front of the camera, so she allowed herself to live in the confidence she had been searching for her whole life, particularly when growing up she felt like the furthest thing from it.

It was refreshing to hear her say this, but I simultaneously felt sad for her. Her finally being brave enough to step into her power still somehow translated into her being rendered powerless in many aspects of her relationships, career and life.

She was placed into a box and was simultaneously shamed for trying to thrive within what limited space she was afforded in this world.

Anderson tried to follow her dreams and pursue her passions, but was repeatedly placed into the same tropes that exploited her for her looks over and over again.

It appeared that the script for her was laid out and if she wanted to keep her career all she had to do was follow it.

In the documentary we see her trying to use her sex appeal for activism, because she realized that if people were only going to pay attention to her appearance, she felt that she may as well use the attention for good.

But still—it wasn’t enough for people to take her seriously, and to see her for who and what she was beyond the surface.

When her privacy was violated and a sex tape with former husband Tommy Lee was stolen from her home, Anderson became more of a spectacle, with some insinuating that a woman like her should be okay with the attention.

While it only furthered Lee’s rockstar persona, it was effectively the end of Anderson’s career, she shares in the documentary.

Despite her best efforts, her name was only ever mentioned alongside a moment she wanted to bury forever—one that was stolen from her—not one she shared willingly.

Anderson, who shares in the documentary that she was a survivor of sexual violence, shares that this violation felt like being taken advantage of all over again.

Once again, she was forced to define herself in terms of what happened to her, instead of the woman she worked to become in spite of it.

What strikes me, though, is that many needed to hear this story before they were able to grant her some humanity.

Sure, I recognize that no one is out here holding their breath to offer sympathy to a stunning blonde bombshell they likely would have envied in their prime.

But Pamela, who clearly had stories buried within her that she had been waiting her whole life to tell, bit her tongue because she knew how little people cared about what she had to say.

While there were many things that stuck with me when watching this, the most striking one was that women don’t owe us their stories in order to earn some empathy.

With this documentary, Pamela finally got to tell her story on her own terms, effectively earning the respect she was denied for most of her career and life.

But why is it that we only realize women deserved better in retrospect?

I won’t extrapolate this one woman’s experience and try to apply it to the whole world—but it is striking to me that it isn’t until women bare their scars do people allow them to believe they earned the right to be here.

If a woman who came to define an iconic era of Hollywood spent her whole life being scrutinized but never truly feeling seen—what does that say for the rest of us?