Pamela Anderson & That Iconic Red Swimsuit

In the mid nineteen nineties, when Pamela Anderson was at the height of her fame, she sat down for an interview with talk show host Regis Fielden. He was the co host of Live with Regis and Kathy Lee, and pam was there to promote Baywatch, which was rated number one in.

The world at that time.

Regis was asking her about the sudden and wild popularity of that show, where she played c J. Parker, a veteran lifeguard patrols the beaches of southern California in a cherry red one piece swimsuit. And that suit, well, that suit was what Regis and seemingly all of America really wanted to talk about.

And I love your red bathing suit.

Oh thank you.

I don't think there's a bost blattering, but there's.

Something about those one piece suits.

Yeah.

Oh I like one piece suit.

That was bikini.

Excuse me what you can't see?

And what gets that laugh at the end is the face Regis makes after he says that he's biting his thumb like a horny teenage boy who just can't contain himself thinking about that swimsuit. And you know what, he wasn't entirely alone. There was something about that swimsuit.

I'm Jessica Bennett and I'm Susie Banacarum.

This is in retrospect, where each week we revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped us.

And that we just can't stop thinking about.

This week, we're talking about a swimsuit, a very specific swimsuit worn by Pamela Anderson on Baywatch, that classic and can't be Lifeguard drama. But we're also talking about what that swimsuit represented, which was a particular view of sexuality that defined nineteen nineties America, which happens to be the era we.

Grew up in.

So jess we're talking about that famous red swimsuit. But like everything else on this show, it's not just a swimsuit, right.

That suit became one of these key artifacts nineties culture, Like we all remember it. It hung on posters in bedrooms of teenagers all across America and the world. It eventually was like plastered onto beer cooozies and beach towels. I was like going down the rabbit hole on eBay. There's calling cards. I remember calling cards when you would have to like go into a payphone and dial Yeah, so that's some suit with Pam and it was on calling cards.

That's weird.

It was on pinup calendars, like basically anywhere you could put an image and sell it. There was Pam in that suit. And side note, she never made a dime from any of those.

Because she didn't have any rights to her own image. The image was around. That's wild too. So what made you think about that suit?

Now?

Yeah, so you'll remember that she released a memoir recently, and she was also the subject of a Netflix documentary that was actually produced by her son, all about her life.

And you know, it's fascinating.

It's full of old magazines, interviews, She's done, all of her Playboy covers. She's very into scrapbooking, so it's like scrap books she made for her kids who are now grown.

Old report cards.

There was like a wedding scrap book album she had made for Tommy Lee. Her ex husband was married to someone else now but who's the father of her children? They co parent And I also uncovered an old bay Watch barbie.

Do you remember that there was a bay Watch Barbie?

I mean, I don't know that I remember it, but I can immediately conjure up the image of it, so I must have been aware of it in some way.

So it's not specifically branded as the Pamela Anderson bay Watch Barbie, but of course she looks like Barbie, and Barbie looks like her. She is the Quintus Barbie exactly, so you know, the Barbie's wearing the red soup. The barbie has the lifeguard Booie. There's a little dolphin which is very palm. Also shows an animal rights activist. Yeah, and to show the impact of this suit, but also the show.

Interesting.

So we're talking about the swimsuit, but for those who need a little refresher Baywatch.

What was Baywatch, Susie? Do you have a recollection of Baywatch?

I mean, I knew that Baywatch was a lifeguard show. It felt like it was on TV all the time in the ninety years it was.

It ran from nineteen eighty nine to nineteen ninety nine, and the show was about a group of lifeguards who patrolled the beaches of La County. The action usually revolved around like dramatic water rescues, so lifeguards diving into waves or even jumping from helicopters into the open ocean. But you know, there were also, as you can imagine, really dramatic things such as shark attacks, earthquakes, like hot affairs, and even murder, so you know, like your usual beach day drama.

Okay, And I remember it as really being a show that starred Pam Anderson, although I also remember that David Hasselhoff was like a big character on.

The show, right, a big character on the show. He was like the captain of the team or something, so a lifeguard team. I don't know.

That is all true.

But while Pam, you know, universal sex icon of the nineties, and some could argue still today, was indeed a big part of it. She didn't actually join until the third season.

Really, yep, I had no idea. I mean, I just think of that show as so tied to her. I can't imagine that show without her.

And the thing about Pam Anderson in that show is that it was really her who took this swimsuit and cemented it into the American psyche in this way that none of us will ever forget. But of course that is how we feel now, and I was really curious how Pam felt about it back then. So I went back to Pam and I asked her what it was like to act in that suit.

I guess that's a difficult question to ask.

I was just doing what I was told wearing the costume, and I would have been on the beach anyway, So it was fun to act in a swimsuit. I was getting a tan and doing a job at the same time. I know a lot of the girls kind of complained about wearing a swimsuit all the time, but I actually really enjoyed it. It was either the red swimsuit or the black swimsuit. Where we did all of our workouts and all of our slow motion montages. People always ask me, how did you stay in such good shape on that show?

I love hearing her voice, but unfortunately I do eat the bagel.

Is that bad?

But yeah, it really is amazing that you can immediately conjure up what that swimsuit looks.

Like, trying to remember if there was one image of that suit that like really crystallizes this. And it's almost like there's dozens of moments. So if you look back at the show itself, you see Pam in the red suit grabbing her booie and running towards the water. We see Pam in the suit bent over like sexily lotioning up with.

Sunscreen as one does.

We see Pam and her swimsuit on the jet ski. We see Pam going to save a drowning man, but like turns out, the guy isn't really drowning, He just wants to Pam and h in the red swimsuit save.

That must have been a lot of the cave prompting a false rescue is a crime?

Can bust me for that?

I love you? And so much slow motion running like slow motion from every angle from back, below, side, top, any angle you could possibly do slow motion. But the show's opening credits are.

Really what I remember.

The watch Sam song I'm Always Here some by the eighties hair metal band Cobra. I love the hair metal band plays in the background, and so as the opening credits play on, you see these scenes of you know, sunny California beach sand babes and bikinis like sun umbrellas, kids laughing, and then you meet c J.

Parker. She's got her hands on her hips.

The camera slowly pans from her very perfect and very tam legs up to the top of her cherry red swimsuit and then up to her face, and we see that that suit is extremely low cut on the top, very high cut on the hips, and like basically side boob is in full effect.

So obviously a very functional lifeguard totally functional suit. And so wait, you're telling me that there's more to the opening than just Pam, because I remember the entire opening is just being Pam running down the beach.

I love that that's the way you remember it, because that's what I think most people's takeaway was. But actually it introduces all the characters there's also a beach scenes like, it's giving us a glimpse into southern California beach life.

But what do we remember we remember par.

What do we actually know about the swimsuit?

I mean, it really does not seem like a functional lifeguard.

Sh Okay, so funny you should raise that because the original suit. So I mentioned that Pamela only joined in season three. So the original suit was inspired by real California lifeguards. It had like an official Elie County lifeguard patch like the real kind. And the creators of this show, one of them had actually started out as a lifeguard in California. So they were quoted at the time talking about how they wanted these suits to be quote practical

Wait, so the original swimsuits were standard issue like lifeguard swim suit.

Yes, they were truly based on real lifeguarding. They wanted to replicate what actual lifeguards wore. At one point, one of the co creators of the show had this whole description about how they wanted the suits to work in

I think this is taking things a little literally for a TV show.

No, I mean, okay, here's the thing.

This was a show that began as something that was meant to be a serious lifeguard show. This was at a time early nineties, like this was the era of like LA Law, Law and Order, NYPD, Blue Er, like all of these shows about like doctors, cops, whatever, where we were like going inside behind the scenes, and they really like exactly got it. So the original conceit for

So then California pages.

Did you know, I did not know that I grew up in California.

So what happened was Baywatch was canceled the serious Baywatch was canceled after its first season on NBC, and then it was basically saved by a syndication deal. In the process, the production budget was slashed by a third and a lot of the original cast members either quit or were fired.

They basically rethought the show.

It got a little bit sexier, they took themselves a little bit less. Seriously, that makes sense. They didn't have as much money. This is actually how the slow motion run gets put into the show, because they were trying to save money and take up more airtimes, so they were.

Like, let's just slow it down.

So that run actually came from one of the creators of the show. His name is Greg Bonan. He was the one who was a lifeguard, so he sort of thought he knew everything about lifeguarding.

Yeah, I mean, he might have known everything about he also seems beside the point, but he.

Also got his start as a TV producer for the Olympics, so he would film the athletes in slow motion to show their athleticism. Oh and so he brought that idea

That, and they just like put in huge like chunks of that.

I mean it would actually someone should do a study of this.

To actually figure out how much of that show, percentage wise, is just running in slow motion.

It's probably more than dialogue.

That is a fascinating way to fill time.

So anyway, then in nineteen eighty two, in it's third season, this is when Pamela Anderson is cast. She actually replaces another actor who quit because she didn't like the new.

Direction of the show.

The slow mo or the sexiness, I.

Mean, I think they go hand in hand. But pam takes on the role of c. J. Parker, who was supposed to be the most experienced lifeguard on the show Fancy. She was a character who was actually partially based on Pam, the real life Pam.

She was like a dreamer.

She was really into like new agy stuff and crystals and mindfulness.

I love the idea that they were like, we should meet with Pam and see what she cares about it, like write it into character.

She was into animal rights.

Yeah, because it's like, you know, it's important for this to feel really authentic, and.

She exactly and she was constantly falling in love. So they also redid the bathing suits.

Ah, but the bathing suits got redone for Pam.

They didn't just redo the suits for Pam. They readed them for everyone. But this was kind of part of this sexier rebrand. So what happens, Well, the new suits have a much lower scoop in the front. They have high cut legs on the sides to kind of show or fake the appearance of height. They often have this really low back, though some of them had crossbacks, and it actually is funny. There's quotes from different actors over

She once said that her swimsuit was.

So far up her butt that she started crying because it was patonful.

Yep.

At a certain point, you know, as this rebrand is happening, actually putting on the simsuit is part of the audition. But I don't think anyone knows this in advance. So like years later, Carmen Electra has this story. She tells The New York Times about how she showed up without having shaved her legs, and she was like, oh God, I hope they don't notice.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like that is something you should warn someone about. But it really does feel like it has the potential to lead to some awkward situations.

It's so objectifying, right.

You're being asked to put on this ssuit.

Well, it's interesting because a few years ago Esquire brought together all of the original actors and did this oral history of the show. And Tracy Bingham, who played the first black bay Watch Babe, she came on in ninety six, So that gives you an idea of how white the show was.

It started in eighty nine, so white.

I remember that show as being so white.

She describes being in her trailer and one of the producers coming in and asking her to put on her suit and then basically like touching underneath her breasts to make sure she wasn't patting them.

That's not okay. Does Pam ever talk about that about sort of those experiences.

Well, so it's interesting because Pam got her start in Playboy, So it sort of sets up this tone. She was discovered in her small town where she grew up in Canada.

She was in her early twenties.

She was at a football game and the JumboTron camera pans over to her and she's wearing this crop top with the Bats you know, that beer brand on it. And so of course Labats is like, who is this woman? They hire her to getting discovered this way? Yeah, and so she goes on to become Playboy's most photographed cover model of all time.

Oh wow, but that takes a few years.

So at this time she was working as the tooltime girl in Home Improvement.

I don't think so well.

The whole role.

Of the tooltime girl was like, not to speak, but just to like look cute in a pair of daisy dukes and have a tool belt on and like handover the tools and so that was the period she was in when she auditioned for Baywatch.

It's interesting because I do really think of Playboy and Pam as very intrinsically connected. Like to me, when I think of the classic Playboy cover model, I do think of Pam.

And that's so interesting too, because actually Baywatch and Playboy are intrinsically connected in the same way. Playboy became this kind of natural casting choice for Baywatch at the time. Also side note, it was often jokingly referred to as Babe Watch.

Yeah, that feels right.

So in season one, the actress who played Shannie McClain, this is a character who was on the first two seasons she had previously posed for Playboy, then came Pam as c J. Parker, later on Carmen Electra who played Lonnie mackenzie Kelly Monico, who made several appearances Playboy even did a Babes of Baywatch issue in the late nineties. So they were going to Playboy in some ways to

I mean that makes sense, because looking good in a magazine has nothing to do with being able to deliver a dialogue.

But they sure could run.

I didn't realize how big bay Watch was until I was researching this. Oh right, Yes, it was one of the first TV shows to be syndicated, which meant that basically they could run it on multiple channels, which probably explains what it seems like.

It was.

At its height, it had billions of viewers, literally billions. It was the most watched TV show in the world, and actually, at a certain point it was literally shown in every country.

Ye how's that even possible? That check this, okay, I mean, I believe you.

It's just some of the foreign syndications eventually started, including what Pam calls the Pamela clause, which they wouldn't buy the episodes unless she appeared in them. She of course didn't get paid any extra for that, but that's impressive. And then one of the most interesting things I found was it there's actually an economic theory name for Baywatch, having something to do with the export of culture into foreign countries called the Baywatch effect.

Oh so that's interesting because it's not really even just an economic export, right, It's like the way we think about America, the way other people in other countries think about us, must be so shaped by this sort of quintessential California show. I mean, I grew up in you know, large part in California, so I always sort of had this image of the quintessential California girl. But that becomes just the American in most.

Places, absolutely, which actually reminds me of Borat. All I could think about was this lovely woman in her red water panties.

Who was this cj oh.

Right, Because in that movie, he's going looking for Pam Anderson.

He's here to like Mary Pam, and then he tries to kidnap her.

Because it's a huge theme all that he knows of America.

Yeah, I mean it makes sense, and it's interesting because I do really think for most of the world, that sort of blonde Barbie girl is what America represents to them in some ways, this sort of like care free, sunny lifestyle.

And of course I grew up in Seattle, which is the opposite of the sunny happy used to the suicide capital of the World.

It's oh interesting, did not know that.

Strangely, I also grew up watching Pamoy Anderson on Baywatch awkwardly with my god. I distinctly remember this with my two younger brothers, who are twins are three years younger, and my dad in like our dingy TV together like a family as a family, and like how did that happen? I do remember my mom always kind of like making remarks about how.

This was trash TV.

Yeah, I mean it's and.

I think there was just not a lot else on.

We didn't have cable, there weren't that many options, and this was like on NBC, so it was supposedly a family friendly show. Yeah, so okay. Pam joined that show. In nineteen ninety two. I was in middle school. I was like insecure, hated my body. I had just taken part in a protest called skirt Fest at my middle school.

What did that protest?

My seventh grade boyfriend had been kicked out of class for wearing my skirt.

Oh this was the era.

Do you remember those like long flowy skirts that everyone was wearing kind of like hippie grungy.

Kids was original boho chic.

Yes exactly, but like not cheek at all.

Anyhow, he got in trouble for wearing a skircho class and got kicked out of class, and so we staged a walk out and we picketed in front of Washington Middle School, and we got the high schoolers to come and they supported us, and we made the local newspaper. But how does this relate to pant I mean, A, we were never wearing swimsuits because it's dark and treary in Seattle all the time, so like the idea of us in a red swimsuit would never happen. Also, like

Yeah, I think it would have been impossible to be a preteen or teen girl in this era and not compare yourself to what was so obviously the ideal. Right, Like you and I are both brunettes, for example, and I was obviously conscious of that growing up in California. I think it's a very natural thing as a woman to see kind of what the idealized female form is

I mean, you know, even in my like grungy skirt in rainy dark depressings. Yeah, that red swimsuit became synonymous with sex and the ideal, and in many ways it was a straight male fantasy of the ideal.

Yeah, the distillation of that fantasy.

You know, it's like, what is the impact of a swimsuit? It's such a tiny thing.

You can really dig into this and say, Okay, what did that teach us about bodies? To wear a sim suit like this, one had to have absolutely bionic, unmovable breath. Yeah.

I mean, one thing I have thought of is that when you're watching that slow mo run, if you were a normal like with natural breasts, your rest would just be like right and balancing like crazy.

And param Anderson has talked at length about like regretting her breast implants, and she got them at this time, and then she got them removed and she got them again. So it's not like she would deny this either. But yes, that is not some suit that a person with natural breast can wear.

Oh, run in at least or run in.

Yeah, the high cut, like you have to be completely waxed to wear some suit that high cut.

And that's interesting because I feel like now or well now there's a backlash. But there was this period where Brazilian bikini waxes became very ubiquitous. But when we were you know, in the nineties, that was not super common.

It's so funny because that was like we were all getting those in high school.

You were, yes, wow, much more advanced.

But actually, we can't talk about all this in a vacuum, like you have to understand what was happening culturally at the time. So this is like mid nineties, it's kind of like the height of raunch feminism. You know, we've come so far toward equality that now we can like OBJECTI virus and it's totally fine.

This is like the girls gone well, there has gone wild.

It's like spring break. Is this also like when the restaurant Hooters, Well.

Certainly I think one of the most popular sort of moments for restaurants, as they call them, the hooters of the world were very much part of the mainstream cultural conversation.

And also shows like The Man Show, which has male comics and then a sideshow of women in bikinis jumping on trampolines, girls jumping on trampling. So, as I was trying to think through what was happening in the culture at the time, I called up Susan Douglas. She's a professor of media studies at the University of Michigan and

Oh, that's interesting because it feels it's kind of a backlash to the eighties image of like the Wall Street working girl with her business suit and her new ten waves white sneakers with their pumps in her bags exactly.

And so in a way, this objectification is almost like a reaction to feminism and to too many or allegedly too many games, because we're always getting too ahead of ourselves and so this is what she calls what she charms and latent sexism, which is essentially this idea of like, hey, full equality has been achieved, Like we have that Wall Street woman who is breaking the glass ceiling. So sexual objectification of women like Pamela Anderson can't really hurt us anymore, right, No, it's progress.

We can be feminist and sexy.

Anyway, here's Susan who will describe it much better than I can.

I think it's easy to forget what a swirl the nineties was of feminist revolt, girl power third wave on the one hand, and the increasing objectrification of women, and also the discovery of teenage girls as a really really important niche market. So you do have this kind of revival of feminism at the same time that you have a backlash against it, and this is what made Susan

Know, which it started back when in the eighties with Brickshields and those Calvin Klein ads, And so you start getting this kind of ironic sexism where of course full equality has been achieved, so it's really not possible to hurt women anymore with sexist depictions in the media because everything is allegedly equal, when of course it wasn't.

It's so interesting because I feel like this is the thing we're kind of seeing again now. And I mean, obviously history repeats itself, but every time it feels like there's some sort of conversation that makes men uncomfortable like me too. Then there's like this backlash that's like, no, it's too far, it's gone too far.

Another thing I learned to mention.

I don't want to give it too much credit, but that swimsuit literally spawned a generation of plastic surgery. Pam Anderson has talked she famously got implants. She's talked many times, and she's very open about it, about regretting it. She called it a vicious cycle that she could never break out of. Side note Ripley's Believe it or Not. At one point offered to put her removed implants.

On display in its museum.

She said, no, yeah, good for her.

But cosmetic surgeons over the years have talked about how she truly ushered in this era of plastic surgery that made them.

Rich like her body, atomic impact exactly.

Her body became the reference point, and typically people would come into plastic surgery offices with photos of her in that red swimsuit and say, like, I want that body.

That body specifically, so like liposection, like whatever it would take to make your body.

Look like that, liposection to perfection.

Do you have any pictures of about the size that you might want to make.

Sure Pamela Anderson, I'd say, so.

That's a clip from this MTV show you might remember it. It's from the early two thousands called I Want a Famous Face, and it shows you exactly what I'm talking about. This young woman is using Pamela Anderson as the literal reference point for.

The plastic surgery that she wants.

I mean, it kind of makes sense.

Pam is beautiful if you're trying to get plastic surgery. It's like a smart reference point, I guess.

And so, of course you know that show is extreme, but I actually found some pretty stunning data about plastic surgery from that time. So pam joining Baywatch in nineteen ninety two, and with the data shows is that in the next ten years, so from nineteen ninety two to two thousand and two, rest augmentations in America went up by five hundred percent.

Oh my god, I mean people won't be able to see my face, but I did, like a comically shocked face just now.

It's a huge number.

And in one article I was reading about those stats, there's this plastic surgeon quoted who basically says, like we were blessed with they watch. It was like an hour long plastic surgery commercial.

They should have given her a kickback.

And the funny thing is, you know, based on my conversations with her and thinks she's said over the years, as all of that is happening, she herself does not feel good about her own body. God.

That is really the true female experience, right, It's like, no matter how much other people admire your body, and can still find the flaws right.

And interestingly, in Pam's case, that's even more complicated because so many people have literally seen her naked.

Right, I mean, we haven't even really gotten into the sex tape yet.

Okay, so we do need to talk about the sex tape. Pam is on Baywatch. She starts dating the rock star Tommy Lee, and during their honeymoon, they start filming. It's what has been called in the popular culture a sex tape, but actually it's like a very long VHS with like tender moments of them getting together.

And then them on their honeymoon, and.

Yes, there are a few minutes in this very long tape of them having sex.

That sex tape gets stolen from.

Their home, from a safe in their home and distributed and basically Pam now talks about this as the great humiliation of her life.

Right, totally without their consent, right, I mean, I think the popular culture now sort of assumes most sex tapes are lead by the people in the sex tape, But in Pam's case, it genuinely was just this personal memento that they had made of their romance, and then somehow somebody got their hands on.

It and this of course, there have been podcasts done just on this tape, but yes, this is like the start of online pornography. She sues them, they lose in court, But this is all happening during Baywatch, and so it connects because for a time after the tape went public, foreign distributors and the networks began demanding that Pam be taken off there like they thought this was going to be too controversial for the show. But interestingly, and maybe not that surprisingly, it actually helps space.

We well, now it's not surprising because we know that, like Kim Kardashian's entire career was kicked off by a sex stage. But back then, I can see how executives might have thought that there may be some sort of backlash against it.

And you know, why are we talking about this?

So the thing is there's this connection between that swimsuit and what would happen to her in her later life and the way that she was kind of set up as this object in many ways. She starts in Playboy where she poses nude. She goes on to be this bomshell on Baywatch that is spread across beach towels and calendars and everything else. And then there's this sex tape which is distributed without her consent, and it's not just her nude, it's pornograph.

Yeah, it's pornography. And there's this real sense that her body belongs to the public.

Right.

One of the oddest things to me, you know, in spending time with her and researching her and reading every interview she's done, watching the documentary, is this sense in truly an anecdote after antatyote after anecdote, that she almost becomes like a public commodity in some way, like people feel entitled to her in almost.

A physical, physical ways.

There are a few clips where you can really hear it.

She goes on Howard Stern ostensibly to talk about her career, and he ends up spending the whole time talking about how cute her private parts are.

Well, you know, gonna be slaughtered. Anty. Let me just look at you perfectly. Let me show KEI in for a second.

Come on, don't sit down so quick.

Matt Lauer, who goes on to be fired for sexual misconduct, does an interview with her where the first question is asking her about her breasts.

May we talk briefly about your Oh my god, I mean that's so crazy, because Matt Lauer was a serious journalist like that would have been in a news interview.

Yeah, that's a really good point. There's another example.

At one point, she takes part in a roast on Comedy Central, and so you know she's agreed to do this, so in some ways she's in on the joke. But again it's her ex husband Tommy Lee who's roasting her, and this is the way the monologue begins.

This is actually a special time for Pam to be here because she just turned thirty eight and her kids just turned fourteen.

And it's almost like this becomes weirdly physical in a sense, like people or fans feel like they are entitled to her physical space. Right.

They claw at her at events, right, They're trying to get to her a lot of the time.

And so she in her book, she has a couple of different stories. One about Tim Allen, who was a star of Home Improvement where she was the tool Time girl, and on her first day on the set, she walks out and he's in a robe and they're outside of the dressing rooms and he flashes her and he says, now you've seen me naked too. He since denied that,

Off of her.

That sounds terrifying.

There's this other story she told me, which she also writes about in her book, but basically, she comes home one day to Malibu when she's living there and a deranged fan has broken into her home, is in the basement and has fallen asleep in the swimsuits, and they basically have no idea how long she's been there.

God, there's so much like invasion of her, like.

A personal space.

Yeah, for what it's worth, the suit is now a safe in her son's home.

It should really be in the Smithsonian. It really should actually, Yeah, I mean seriously.

Even as late as two thousand and three. You remember that book with Chuck Cluster in Books Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs.

Of course, he.

Writes about Pamela Anderson in there, and there's this quote, am I physically attracted to Pamela Anderson, of course, But the more I see her, the more I realize I'm not looking at a person I'd like to sleep with I'm looking at America.

That really is the thing, Right, She's so intrinsically tied up with the idea of America for so many people, she becomes almost like a symbol rather than a person.

Right, She's like a souvenir that everybody wants to own a piece of. And I mean, look like Pamela Anderson is certainly not the first woman in our culture to become a sexual commodity or even to own her part in that. I mean, I was thinking back to you know, there's like Britney Spears, Marilyn Monroe to a large degree, even I think like Lil Kim in the nineties to

Like a one dimensional pin up, so people didn't really see her as human in many ways, like they don't see her as a living, breathing human. They just really see almost this image of her in their minds that they disassociate with her as a person. And now she's sort of taking control of her narrative. She's read the Facebook, she's doing all.

This, She's inserting some of the complexity back in.

I don't know how much time you're spending on TikTok these days, but I do spend a.

Lot of time.

One day.

There's a whole embarrassing amount hashtag pamcore, like it is a full aesthetic. It is bad people are doing, like the thin penciled eyebrows, the lip liner, like the tossled bun on the top of the head, the bangs like.

This part of like the bimbo core thing.

It's a little bit of bimbo core. It's a little bit barbiecore. And Pam is back. But I have to tell you this other story actually, which is that when I was with her at her home in Canada, we were sitting in her kitchen. We were baking Christmas cookies.

And all that sounds nice. It's like a celebrity Hallmark.

Movie totally, and actually she's an amazing cook.

But you know, so I'm recording all of this obviously because I was doing this profile of her, and so we're hanging out in the kitchen. Her assistant Jonathan was near us. He's sort of helping out, and I pull out my phone to show her this TikTok filter that lets you basically put nineties Pam onto your twenty twenty three human, not pam face. And so Pam was not on social media, so she'd never seen this, and she literally screamed, Oh, that's so funny.

What the fuck that's insane.

You gotta do this?

What the hell? I mean, my kids know about this. This is insane.

This is like the extent of mine.

That's hysterical. That's such a sweet and funny moment.

Like it's really lovely to hear her finally getting to enjoy some of this attention and actually be able to laugh at all the absurdity of it.

Yeah, I mean, I was actually thinking about that. It kind of wraps up the idea for this episode perfectly, Like there are certainly parts of Pamela Anderson's life in retrospect that she wants to stay in the past, Like she doesn't want to be that cartoonish nineties version of herself, and she has said that, but at least now she's getting to decide, you know, what she wants to embrace in what she wants to leave behind, And in some ways this suit actually is a happy memory for her.

Just represents the time in my history, one of my favorite times, just to be so carefree on the beach working when my sons were just born. Putting on that redslim suit just a couple months after I gave birth. You know, I had to get back in the suit.

I don't know.

It made me feel makes me feel happy to think about it. It was really a beautiful time in my life.

That really does feel like a perfect place to end it.

Yeah, it really does.

So.

I guess that's our show for this week. See you next week.

This is in Retrospect. Thanks for listening.

Is there a cultural moment you can't stop thinking about and want us to explore in a future episode. Email us at inretropod at gmail dot com, or find us on Instagram at in retropod.

If you love this podcast, please rate and review us on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram, which we may or may not delete.

You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett and at susib NYC. Also check out Jessica's books Feminist Fight Club and This Is eighteen.

In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcast and the Media. Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our engineer and sound designer. Sharon Attiya is our researcher and associate producer.

Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina Norbel.

Our artwork is from Pentagram.

Additional editing help from Mary Doo and Mike Coscarelli. Sound correction and mastering by Amanda Rose Smith.

We are your hosts Susie Vannacarum.

And Jessica Bennett. We're also executive producers. For even more, check out in retropod dot com.

See you next week.