Hype & Glory

JULIE BURCHILL

Blonde goddess or bust:, Pamela Lee surfs the tidal wave to immortality

Vanities

Even if Lana Turner had been discovered sipping a soda at Schwab's, her story would still not out-sashay Pamela's.

The Pamela Lee Story is strange but true, and may well be the last Star Is Born saga of KH the 20th century.

In the summer of 1988,

Miss Pamela Anderson was a respectable 21-year-old Canadian fitness instructor, a veritable vestal virgin of the new narcissism. One sunny afternoon she attended a British Columbia Lions football game in Vancouver wearing a Labatt's T-shirt, and, during a slow moment, a TV cameraman picked her out of a crowd of 50,000 lost souls and flashed a close-up of her onto the massive scoreboard screen.

And the rest is hysteria. The crowd went wild, Labatt's went for the phone, and within a fortnight Pamela Anderson was the Elizabeth Hurley of Labatt's. It wasn't long before Playboy came calling. Miss Anderson demurely turned down its offer of a centerfold but accepted the offer of its October 1989 cover. (She did grace the centerfold a few months later.) By 1992 she was playing Lisa the Tool Girl on America's highest-rated new sitcom, Home Improvement, before taking over Erika Eleniak's

role as the blonde Venus in a red one-piece on Baywatch. Miss Anderson looked especially lovely4on her third Playboy cover: Stetson hat, cut-off blue jeans, and cowboy boots, not to mention that tumbling mane of hair. In addition to her bedroom eyes and bedroom mouth, she has a bedroom nose—it seems to be permanently upturned, almost twitching, as if sniffing after the scent of sex, success, or both. Pamela is like a throwback to the frenzied days of the sunlit 60s-70s sexual smorgasbord. She's not just a blonde, she's a Blonde Goddess. Jayne Mansfield was a blonde; Marilyn Monroe was a Blonde Goddess. Bo Derek was a blonde; Deborah Harry was a Blonde Goddess. The B.G. is a dream, a living, breathing phantasm of physical love—the genie who escapes from your genitalia when rubbed hard enough.

Is Pamela talented? The jury's still out on that one, probably poring over photographs of her in swimsuits. Is she beautiful? Without doubt. There is a school of thought which claims beauty is closer to ugliness than prettiness, and mere prettiness rules out any claims to beauty. But the fact is that while some people can be beautiful without passing through the passport control of prettiness—Garbo, Thurman—many more are both pretty and beautiful; Marilyn Monroe was the absolute proof.

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When I look at Pamela, I see a beautiful woman masquerading as "a beautiful woman," a timeless beauty who has done everything in her power to become a transient one. For if this bride of fortune were stripped bare of her blond hair, her spray-on suntan, her silicone valley, and her elaborate makeup, and tempted out of her black leather cat suit and into a little black jersey dress, we could see a woman far more lovely than the icon we know and love or love to hate.

The reason I love Pamela, when she is universal Public Enemy No. 1 among women between 9 and 90, is her absolute lack of hypocrisy about what being a star means. Nowhere was this better displayed than at Cannes last May, where our heroine turned up to promote her film, Barb Wire, BAYWATCH BABE TAKES OVER FILM FESTIVAL! gasped the tabloids. "She's done nothing—but she's already stolen the show at the world's greatest film festival," a boring French theorist complained. "The organizers kid themselves it's about a serious debate on film. Then Pamela Anderson mania takes over. It's a joke."

Pamela Anderson Lee's career to date has been a joke— but it's not on her. The joke at Cannes was on all those highfalutin actresses who were strutting their stuff on the Croisette, from Sharon Stone to Emma Thompson, trying to look like librarians or serious actresses—trying to look like real people. But they're not, they're stars, and stars should wear skintight leather cat suits and smile for the camera. How refreshing to find a sex symbol as straightforward as Pamela in a world where Demi Moore and Sharon Stone call themselves feminists.

It is to be sincerely hoped that Pamela will never become a serious actress; we have too many of those, and they're all silly. All we Pamela-lovers are hoping and praying that Barb Wire—her Bus Stop—will be a huge hit and that one day Pamela will find her very own Arthur Miller (Tommy Lee, on the other hand, appears to have the gallantry and chivalry of all three Kennedy boys rolled together), though we do hope it's not David Mamet. Saul Bellow would be nice, a Nobel Prize winner and a fellow Canuck, to boot.

Until she finds him, we will continue to defend her by any means necessary. Well, yes, that lip liner

is a bit much—but then, love must be blind, a bit like ' * n ....-i — ^ r\fPamela when she puts that lip liner on. But we will I_0J ANuibLr •

press on, because at the end of the day, Pamela alone ->

knows what makes a star: la publicite, and then some.

And because she is the ultimate babe, the Playmate of the Western World. "Everybody says I'm plastic from head to toe," our heroine once reflected. "Can't stand next to a radiator or I'll melt." No, baby, you can't stand next to a radiator because he'll melt. And so would the rest of us. We're only human—not like you, O great blonde babe goddess! □

The Pamela Chronicles

Cover girl Pamela, Playmate of the Month in February 1990, poses for the July 1992 issue of Playboy.

1992

Pamela creates a media frenzy while promoting her feature film, Barb Wire, at the 48th Cannes Film Festival.

1988

A neophyte Pamela Anderson busts out as a sex symbol. The Canadian beauty was discovered at a British Columbia Lions football game.

1991 As Lisa the Tool Girl on the hit television show Home Improvement with Tim Allen, Pamela announces the tool du jour.

1992

Now cast as senior lifeguard C. J. Parker on Baywatch, Pamela rides the waves at the Malibu Celebration Surfers Challenge, sponsored by the American Oceans Campaign.

1994Baywatch (a.k.a. "Babewatch") becomes the most viewed television show on earth; Pamela becomes noticeably more pneumatic.

1995