While watching Pamela: A Love Story, the new Netflix documentary about Pamela Anderson’s life, I was struck by interview clips at the height of the model turned actress’s career. The mostly male interlocutors were bizarrely obsessed with her appearance (her breasts), and they leered and ogled and asked vapid, degrading questions that Anderson largely tolerated with an almost preternatural patience and humor. She knew her lane and was willing to stay in it. In several interviews, she reaches a point where she is clearly done with the condescension and lets them know she is more than fodder for male fantasy. Sadly, these valiant stands were mostly ignored. How could the interviewers recognize her humanity while so fixated on her buxom assets?
