Pamela Anderson Deserved Better

She’s the archetype of 1990s beauty and excess: a glamorous vixen that drew the lustful gazes of too many boys (and men) and whipped up jealous hatred from millions of women who didn’t ascend to her level of culturally defined beauty. She was an actress on the show (Baywatch) that was at one time the most popular show on the planet. She was a Playboy pinup. She had fame, beauty, and riches. She had everything the world had to offer.

The response from preachers like me was to vilify her, condemn her and hold her up as an example of the depravity of American sin. She was both secretly coveted after and publicly loathed by the church. And yet, Pamela Anderson deserved better. Too many blindly judged without even wondering what drove her to  to become a caricature of a person. Yesterday at an interview in Cannes, Pamela revealed a dark secret about her past that doesn’t excuse her actions, but it helps explains them.

“I did not have an easy childhood. Despite loving parents I was molested from age 6-10 by my female babysitter. I went to a friends boyfriends house while she was busy. The boyfriends older brother decided he would teach me backgammon which led into a back massage which led into rape, my first heterosexual experience. He was 25 yrs old. I was 12.

My first boyfriend in grade 9 decided it would be funny to gang rape me (with 6 of his friends). Needless to say I had a hard time trusting humans. I just wanted off this earth.”

When I read her interview my heart broke for the overwhelming trauma this little girl had to endure. Suddenly Pamela Anderson isn’t a glorious caricature of fame and beauty, she’s a little girl being taken advantage of in the most violating ways. She deserved better. The girl who became an object of lust for millions of men had lost her sense of self-worth years before. Behind the smile was an empty shell, a fractured soul who was exploited by a culture who wanted her body and nothing more. Unfortunately that vicious cycle was all too familiar. That’s all her childhood had been.

Pamela Anderson deserved better.