Mediaman's Reviews > Love, Pamela

Shallow, uninspiring book of a somewhat complicated actress/model who writes more like a child. Her poetry is sewn throughout the book and while some might like it, I found it distracting in order to cover up some real truths that Anderson chooses to skip over.

She does give a fairly good short summary of her childhood, with her hippy parents and her own teen rebellious streak. She flutters through a few stories, doesn't give many specifics, and never seems to be ashamed of doing some very bad things. She is sexually abused when very young and blames some of her lackadaisical attitude on that.

Before you know it she has moved to Vancouver, is discovered on a crowd cam at a football game, and seemingly within months is on the cover of Playboy (we're unsure of the timeline because there are almost no dates in this book). But where are the photos? None are included, and if any memoir should have them it should be this.

If you're looking for any inside details on her career or love life you won't find much here. It almost seems like she went through her Wikipedia page and just then jotted down a sentence or two about the significant events. Playboy mansion? Check. Dating Scott Baio? A sentence. Other serious boyfriends? Often just alluded to or not mentioned by name. Baywatch? Almost nothing but she didn't want to do the series. Home Improvement? Well we know Tim Allen isn't happy about his one-sentence mention but that's about all she says regarding the series that started her on the road to fame but she had no intention of being on a sitcom! While she was an extra on Married With Children, as she walked to her car, the Home Improvement casting director mistook her for auditioning for the regular sitcom role she was given.

And this is Pamela Anderson's life--people throwing themselves at her and job offers falling into her lap without even trying or supposedly know what's going on. Despite her claims of thinking she isn't attractive, obviously her looks made everyone give her things she didn't earn or deserve, resulting in an expectation that she didn't really need to try or make any personal choices.

What are better detailed in her book are her relationships with the main men in her life. Jon Peters (creepy oddball producer). Tommy Lee (drugged and crazy), and Kid Rock (who thought she was a whore). Those stories are somewhat interesting but pretty short and written without much emotion other than mostly positive memories even in negative circumstances.

While Anderson claims she's highly intelligent (and that her abusive chimney sweep dad was Mensa-level brilliant? Seriously?) she comes across as a lightweight and at times an airhead that drifts from uplifting cause to depressingly bad choices. At one point with Lee she attempts suicide and kind of makes it sound like more of an embarrassment than an understanding that it was a sign she needed help and rehab.

Then she claims she has "silly photographic memory," but if that's true why isn't this book filled with specific details and better stories? Hilariously, just three sentences after she wrote that, she said, "The Baywatch years were a blur." Huh? What is it, does she have a great memory or not? Maybe all the drugs and men have caused things to blur together.

She ends a chapter on Tommy Lee bragging about an amazing birthday party she planned, saying, "Love is the quality of attention we pay to things." Well based on that, she doesn't really send her love to readers or fans in this book the way the title would imply. There is very little attention paid to detail and too much of trippy-hippy creativity, including a final page self-portrait that Rorschach would analyze as the author being a total mess.