Pam & Tommy (& Me)
On beauty, blondness, and the dark desire to be seen as so much more than just a pretty face.
I recently binge-watched Pam & Tommy on Hulu. For those unfamiliar, back in the nineties, Pamela Anderson was a (large-breasted) actress who was famous for being beautiful, blonde, and effortless at gracefully running on the beach as resident Baywatch babe “CJ.” Tommy Lee was a psychotic, faltering rockstar with a hot temper and bad taste in facial hair, tattoos, and jewelry. The two were swept away in a whirlwind romance culminating in the couple marrying on the beach four days after meeting each other. Pamela wore a white bikini. Tommy probably wore some kind of special-occasion nipple rings.
During a home renovation project, Tommy fired a contractor, who, seeking to recoup his costs, broke into the couple’s home and stole a safe containing guns, cash, that iconic wedding bikini, jewelry, and a Hi8 video containing a sex tape made by the couple while out on their boat on Lake Mead. The contractor, hungry for revenge, began selling the tape online, where it quickly went (what I suppose we could call these days) “viral.” The fallout was swift and predictable. Pamela was further objectified, with men who could ostensibly do something to stop the spread of her intimate moment unwilling to do so because she’d posed in Playboy, which they took as tacit consent. While claiming to relate, Tommy was on the other side of the spectrum, with men congratulating him on the sex with Pamela Anderson as well as the size of his penis.
In one of the show’s many exposition-heavy moments, Pamela Anderson (played by Lily James) states that the people who can help her refuse to do so because they believe, “sluts don’t have a say in what happens to photos of their body.”
The idea then, and the idea now, is that beautiful women have no agency. We belong to everyone, and therefore belong to no one in particular. Occasionally, we are collateral damage in a war of egos—ethereal specters floating in the collective consciousness for everyone’s enjoyment, but no man’s singular desire. Beauty is a complex concept laden with some heavy presuppositions, and yet, it’s an untouchable subject because beauty is (and beautiful women are) so often seen as a commodity rather than a descriptor. It’s a fascination, it’s a debate, it’s a taboo. It’s a way for others to identify us, but we’re not allowed to use it to self-identify, because then it becomes vanity. We’re not allowed to speak on it, because true beauty should never be aware of itself. This is because beauty can be one of the loneliest and most painful things to be. And yet, it is still one of the most sought-after ideals.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a beautiful woman who has never been violated by a man. Something about men is that they seem to feel entitled to us and to our space. In the case of Pam & Tommy, that entitlement went so far as to include strangers feeling justified in watching an intimate moment between a woman and her husband: because she had put her beauty on display previously, it was seen as a blanket endorsement of any unwanted advance or any un-consented display. Would anyone have wanted to be privy to that deeply personal moment if had it not been for Pamela’s beauty? Did the justification exist simply because people enjoyed looking at it? And why was it so difficult for many to understand that she did not want the moment shared, that she did not want her beauty displayed in such a way?
I’ve always hated the saying, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Why not intelligence? Why not wit? It seems that everyone wants to be seen as beautiful but few acknowledge that beauty can be a gatekeeper of bigger and better things. Why can buxom blondes not have brilliant brains, depth of character, and complex struggles? We can, but if others choose to see them is the question. Many do not.
Desirability, of course, is something that is misunderstood. Desirable women seemingly have no trouble finding mates. However, so often, we captivate narcissistic and insecure men, as they are the only ones with the balls to pursue us. Desirable women are supposedly given opportunities based on their looks—but that’s the thing. Why should looks alone qualify us? We often have brilliance as well. Gumption. Grit. And that’s all second fiddle to something that is only skin-deep. The opportunities are often given under unsavory circumstances, with strings attached, with some carnal motivation. We are expected to be one-note, agreeable, and unwilling to stand up for ourselves.
They say “blondes have more fun.” I can attest to this. (To an extent.) You get more looks when walking down the street, men hold doors open for you and compliment you in a gentlemanly way. (Yes, it feels good. I appreciate a little bit of chivalry.) My experience as a brunette taught me that men will always fetishize the vaguely-ethnic woman with a fervor bordering on dangerous, yet they will rarely get close enough to cause any real harm. I’d been exoticized, made almost untouchable. One man likened my brunette era to “Inanna,” ancient Sumerian goddess of love, sensuality, fertility, procreation, and also of war. Lovely, but terrifying. Now blonde, men approach me with (feigned) vulnerability. Sweeter. Kinder. Never not-so-subtly alluding to any sort of inner sadomasochistic tendencies in so much as a basic conversation. (Men, if you’re reading this, you’re rarely as smooth as you think.) They’re charming and show a certain softness, one I’ve learned has a perilous edge to it. Leaning into conventional beauty and without the distance afforded by that veil of “otherness” (being aesthetically unapproachable), women like me—and possibly like you—know that our chances of being treated like a mere human are slim. Beautiful women are seen as objects to be had. It doesn’t matter how progressive a man may be. Not for Pamela Anderson. Not for me. Not for you.
So what is left for us to do?
If this seems extreme, consider Saints Medana (Ireland) and Triduana (Scotland)—Christian princesses, relentlessly pursued by unwelcome suitors (who also happened to be pagan). These men professed an obsessive kind of love (lust), and claimed to not be able to live without the object of their affections’ blue eyes. Both stories have similar endings—in order for the women to free themselves from the attention, they plucked out their eyes. Medana tossed her at her suitor’s feet whereas Triduana was a little more dramatic and tore them out, placed them on a skewer, and sent them to her “lover.” In a sense, this displays an utmost reverence and devotion to God. In her essay “Bluets,” Maggie Nelson ponders if these actions were more of a form of self-punishment and a form of averting their own unsavory desires.
I have a more pragmatic explanation: these women probably wanted to be seen as more than a pair of gorgeous blue eyes. (Or, perfect perky breasts. Or svelte legs. Or pouty lips. Or any singular feature that would captivate a man.) I’ve been in many close-quarter encounters with men who feel the need to remark on my “beautiful blue eyes,” whether in a romantic sense or not. It’s difficult to not roll my beautiful blue eyes at them, because, let’s be honest, it’s perhaps the least imaginative compliment that exists. Zero effort. Quite trite. It’s been done to death. And I know what you may be thinking, “E.M., can you just take the compliment?” I can’t. Because for my entire life, my essence has been distilled into my looks. Je suis Pamela Anderson. We’re women who want to be loved, and we’re seen as just about anything and everything but a woman worth protecting. Why? I ask myself this all the time. I still don’t know.
What’s most heartbreaking about the Pam & Tommy story is that Pam is depicted as—and this is confirmed by those who have interacted with her in real life—the sweetest, kindest, most unassuming woman. She is beautiful, and she is comfortable and confident in her beauty. She longs to be seen as more than just a pretty face and great body though. She has great depth to her, and longs to be cast in more complex roles. She latches onto Tommy because of his seemingly uncontainable desire for her. This uncontainable desire is, of course, rooted in lust, but when you are a woman starved for desire, you will do almost anything to chase it. Illustrated in the sex tape is a woman who is filled with love for a man she desperately hopes sees her as a soul worth adoration, a vessel for all sorts of sentiments to be cherished, rather than a body to be glorified and consumed. I’ve been there. My most beautiful friends have as well. The inability so many men have to separate love from lust is troubling. I almost wonder if it’s because they can’t distinguish between the two?
A few years after the sex tape debacle, Pam filed for divorce. Tommy was (perhaps unsurprisingly), an abuser and had pleaded guilty to beating her in their kitchen at least once. It’s an all-too-familiar tale, and it breaks my heart. Not to continue skipping like a broken record but it really does seem that the most beautiful women I know are the unluckiest in love: revenge porn, domestic abuse, and mistreatment of all flavors are a common thread, to the point at which I must question if beauty is a blessing, or a curse. I was taught growing up that women give sex to get love, and men give love to get sex. I now believe that this is an over-simplification, but have yet to meet a man who disproves it entirely.
There is no place lonelier than deep in the throes of desperation—desiring to be desired more than lust alone can allow, needing to be seen far beyond what is visible. We’re told, implicitly or explicitly, that our looks are all that we can offer. We’re taught that speaking up diminishes our beauty (which is “all we have”), and that beauty is rare and to be chased, but never cherished, for beauty is fleeting (which, again, is unfortunate because it is “all we have”). We’re categorized as shallow not because we offer no depth, but because very few care to discover it. What else does a beautiful woman need to offer? Beautiful women stroke a man’s ego while also causing him to feel incredibly small. Whereas a woman’s insecurity can manifest as devotion, we more often than not tend to align with mates with insecurities that manifest as resentment.
Whether we like it or not, these were the cards we were dealt. I want to say it gets better as we continue along the path to self-actualization. While I don’t recommend plucking out your eyes right now, I’m saying maybe don’t rule it out either.