Pamela Anderson - ‘It wasn’t about being pretty, it was about being brave’

I can’t believe I get to say this but…PAMELA ANDERSON! ON HOW TO FAIL! The one and only! A woman I grew up watching on TV, Pamela was an icon of a generation…But the second act of her career has been the most powerful and Anderson joins me for a vulnerable chat about her long journey of embracing beauty on her own terms, understand her self-worth, embracing self-acceptance and how it was never about being pretty for her - it was always about being brave. Together, we unpack the beauty ideals of early 2000s that continue to shape how women view themselves today. Backed by Dove’s Self Esteem Project body confidence science and exercises, this episode dives deep into Pamela reflecting on being the poster girl of an era and shares how she’s reclaimed her image, her narrative and what beauty means to her. ✨ IN THIS EPISODE: 00:00 Intro 02:08 Second Act and Self-Discovery 06:01 Embracing Natural Beauty and Challenging Norms 13:11 Reflections on Beauty and Self-Worth 18:41 Journey to Self-Acceptance 23:16 Relationship with Her Parents and Personal Growth 27:54 The Early Days of Styling 28:35 Creating Iconic Looks 29:10 Rockstar Wife Persona 32:05 Impact of Y2K and Social Media 33:07 Body Image and Self-Acceptance 35:36 The Dove Self-Esteem Project 38:54 Embracing Natural Beauty 42:01 Reflections on Fame and Identity Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com If you want more support, Dove has created a journal designed to help you reflect, reset, and take control of how you engage with beauty and your body. You can find it at dove.com/why2k. Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan Mix Engineer: Matias Torres Studio Engineer: Gulliver Tickell Assistant Producer: Suhaar Ali Senior Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Carly Maile How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Elizabeth Day?

  Just to note before we get started that abuse is mentioned in this episode.

• 0:10Elizabeth Day?

  Hello and welcome to How to Fail. For those that are new here, this is the podcast that looks at how failure has shaped our lives and what, if anything, we have learnt from those failures. I have a very special episode for you today in partnership with the Dove Self Esteem Project. The Dove Self Esteem Project is an amazing initiative, supported by science-backed methodology that we can all introduce into our lives to help us improve our relationship with our bodies. And I'll be sharing some of these exercises a little later on in the episode. I could not be more excited about my guest today, the iconic Pamela Anderson. She's brought three failures, or lessons learnt, as she

• 0:55Elizabeth Day?

  doesn't like the word failure, and as you know, neither do I. And we'll be taking a look at how the 2000s were a seminal decade, but one that might also have taken its toll on our self-esteem. I do hope you enjoy this episode with Pamela. Every so often on How to Fail, I get to interview someone who defines a cultural epoch. Pamela Anderson is one of those women. She was born in Canada to a repairman father and waitress mother. At the age of 21, she was featured by chance on a stadium screen at a local football game. That moment led to a modeling contract, and later the first

• 1:34Elizabeth Day?

  of many offers from Playboy. Acting was her next step. In the 90s, she gained global recognition as C J Parker in the TV series Baywatch. Posters of Anderson in the famed red swimsuit adorned many a teenager's wall, and she became the absolute embodiment of a specific sexy blonde beauty.

• 1:57Elizabeth Day?

  Film roles followed, including the lead in 1996's Barb Wire. Along the way, she had two beloved sons and became a vocal advocate for the animal rights organisation, PETA. But the second act of her career has been her most powerful. In 2022, her turn as Roxy Hart in Chicago on Broadway attracted sellout audiences. A year later, a Netflix documentary produced and directed by her elder son foregrounded Anderson's vulnerability and honesty as she reclaimed her narrative. Her recent performance in The Last Showgirl received widespread critical acclaim, as well as a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress.

• 2:38Elizabeth Day?

  And she has become the unwitting spokeswoman for a new kind of bodily freedom, appearing at red carpet events and on fashion front rows entirely makeup-free. It shouldn't be radical, and yet it is. And it's a radicalism that comes from Anderson's own desire to continue discovering her true nature, stripping back the layers and embracing self-acceptance. "I think, instead of trying to be this polished person, I'd rather be raw," she says. "Ten years ago, I felt like a failure. I'm definitely much happier now." Pamela Anderson, welcome to How to Fail.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  How to fail with grace and dignity.

• 3:23Elizabeth Day?

  Exactly that.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  But I mean, you can't call it failure is a funny word.

• 3:29Elizabeth Day?

  We need to rebrand it, and that's what this podcast is all about.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:32Elizabeth Day?

  I firmly believe that failure is the lessons wrapped up in mistakes, and I think you do too.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:38Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  I mean, it's fun to fail. I mean, we have to, to learn, and that's what makes us interesting.

• 3:43Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. Well, you are fascinating, and I wanted to end on that idea that there's been this pivotal shift in your career, and it's happened in your 50s. How have your 50s felt to you?

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I thought I was retired. I went to my garden. I thought, well, I guess that's what the world is going to think of me. And I really was disappointed in a way, thinking I never really was going to be able to reach what I thought would be my full potential. I've always kind of been carrying the secret that I could do more. But you, this business is a funny, has a funny way about it. And So I went into my garden, I thought, well, that's okay, that's okay. And I actually got to do Broadway. So I thought from Baywatch to Broadway, I can live with that. But to get this opportunity to come back and and to be able to play in The Last Showgirl and to for Gia to see the documentary, which my son produced.

• 4:40Elizabeth Day?

  This is Gia Coppola, the director.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  And it's just, it's a happy surprise. And so I feel like not too many people get second chances like this. And especially in this industry. So I'm making the most of it. And I just kind of want to see what I'm made of. And it feels very surreal to even hear you introduce me the way you did, because I still have this connotation when I hear my name. I picture that girl in the red bathing suit, or, you know, the marriages, or the just the personal part of it. So if I feel that way, I'm sure many people feel that way. I mean, not that it's on top of anybody's list of things to think about, but I I have a hard time shaking that image of myself, too.

• 5:23Elizabeth Day?

  Hmm.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  It's been a funny kind of excavation in these last few years is to remember who I am, and what are my original thoughts, what are my dreams and desires, and how do I go about round two with all the lessons that I learned the first time around, and thinking, I just don't want to fall into the same trappings.

• 5:42Elizabeth Day?

  I can't wait to get deeper into this with you, because that is so powerfully expressed. And you said there, not that it's up a most of people's minds to think about, but I actually think for so many women, they really relate to that sense of excavation of their true selfhood, because so many of us have lived under these sort of socially conditioned rules and expectations. And I think there's something so powerful about what you're doing, because you're partnering with the Dove Self Esteem Project on this episode, to open up these kinds of conversations to a wider audience. And I wonder what it was that drew you to this particular kind of work.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  I mean, I get people coming up to me on the street, you know, the grocery store, on the plane, and really

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Loving this choice that I've made. So I feel like it is resonating and it's something I want to explore deeper too, even for myself, because you know, I'm a rebel. I'm always challenging things. I'm always doing the opposite of what people tell me to do. I don't know, I just have that in me. And so I want to work with people that are, have the same concerns. We have these generational habits, you know, the way that we're brought up even, and kind of just these things stick in our heads. So I want to break free of that. Like, I feel like this is a little bit of a rebel move is to be who you want to be. Like, what is beauty? Beauty is subjective. And we don't have to look like the covers of magazines.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  We don't have to do the industry standard, which everybody was so horrified when I decided I didn't need a glam team for certain events. You know, I'd rather go look at architecture at the museum when I was in Paris. I thought, you know, who's looking at me? I'm clothed from head to toe with these big hats and, you know, this much of my face is sticking out. Is anyone gonna really fall over backwards if I'm not wearing makeup? And that's where it started at Paris Fashion Week. And it just sent everybody scrambling around me, thinking, no, this is not what people do. And I said, well, that even gives me more reason to do it. And not that it was, you know, world peace or anything, but it was just me challenging myself, thinking, why am I sitting in a makeup chair for three hours when, you know, I'm

• 7:53Speaker 01

  not trying to be the prettiest girl in the room? I'm, you know, I'm going to a fashion show, no one's looking at me. Like, what am I? And even if they were, why am I doing this? Because this just seems like a habit. And not that I'm opposed to makeup, because I love getting dressed up and glammed up. I just felt like it was time to, I had nothing to lose. And I felt, I'm not trying to create a persona right now. I'm not trying to be famous. I need to use my position to... Experiment and open up conversations. You know, my sons have, you know, young women in their lives and I have nieces and I've had

• 8:34Speaker 01

  stepdaughters and I've seen how this social media craze has really created some, a bit of depression in women, how they don't look like their Instagram photos when they look in the mirror. And how does that feel? We didn't grow up with that. We grew up with other things, other challenges, but this is, I think, is a real, it's a big challenge. And I have to catch myself too. I'll see a picture of myself where I go, oh, you know, I look terrible. And then I have to go, no, that's how I look and that's okay. That's okay.

• 9:04Elizabeth Day?

  Yes, you did that actually on a briefing call that we had for this podcast. And there was this, there was this glorious photo of you looking beautiful. And you said, oh, I hate that photo. And it was so relatable because then a photo came up of me and I was like, I hate that photo.

• 9:20Elizabeth Day?

  We're so harsh on ourselves.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  We are, we're our own worst critics. And I was painfully shy as a young girl. I had a great imagination. I knew how to be other people from very early on. You know, it was a survival mechanism. I think acting is a survival mechanism. I think that I really want to know who I am and I'm just discovering that now. I had a, just a really fun aunt that was bedazzled head to toe. My Auntie Vi was just wonderful. And my mom was the bombshell, you know, with the bouffant and the gardening gloves and the rolled up jeans and the, you know, she, she always told stories about how she couldn't afford to eat when she was younger, but she could afford to get her hair done. And she always said, if you're pretty, you're more powerful. And she would always, like, she hates this time right now for me.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  She's like, can you just put an eye on anything before you walk out the door? Comb your hair, you know, show your figure, you know, what are you doing? And she just can't understand that this is really important to me. It's not that I'm letting myself go. I'm not, you know, I don't feel like I look like a mess when I walk out the door. I just. I'm just peeling it back to see who I am. It's just, it's a starting position. I don't know what my next incarnation is, but it's not going to be what my mother tells me to do.

• 10:35Elizabeth Day?

  Well, we're going to come on to your mother as one of your failures, your first failure, in fact. But before we do, I do have lots of serious deep questions. But before we get on to them, do you still have your red swimsuit from Baywatch?

• 10:47Speaker 01

  I do have one.

• 10:48Elizabeth Day?

  Okay.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have one at home. I have a little bit of everything. It's funny, I didn't think I saved everything, but I guess I'm a little bit of a pack rat. Otherwise, my son could have never, you know, made that documentary. I told him, I said, I didn't save anything. And he's like, and then we opened up all the storage and it was like, I saved everything.

• 11:07Elizabeth Day?

  It was such a great documentary and it must have been so special making it with your son.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, he just used what was out there. I mean, I had a couple of interviews, but it was, it was him, he put it all together. And he said, it was kind of like finding out about his life in reverse. Like he really could understand me better. It was almost more healing for him and Dylan, Brandon and Dylan. I can't get through it. I've seen the little bits of it. They wanted to do a screening for me. I couldn't watch it. I just feel like it's, um, it's sentimental. Obviously, it's hard to watch yourself and your life, but there was parts of it that I just started crying and I thought, okay, I'm not doing this to myself. Live in the present.

• 11:49Elizabeth Day?

  Live in the present. And as you were saying there, there's something so powerful about allowing your image to be out there and knowing that it's not the whole truth of you.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Well, I think especially in the UK. Let's just say tabloid culture. There was a point in my career where, in my life and in my personal life, where I just couldn't have any of that around me. I didn't have publicists back in the day. I didn't have a, a team around me that was, you know, making sure things were correct. And I wasn't, and I just found that I couldn't look. I felt so far removed from that image that I just gave up. And it was disappointing because there were times where people would tell me, you know, you're You belong to the world. You have no right to privacy. You're a public figure. And I say, yes, but it doesn't need to be correct.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Basically, it's people can steal from you. They can say these things about you and there's no way to fight back. And, you know, I know I fed into it along the way, too. So, I mean, looking back in hindsight, I would have done some things differently, but I needed the life experience to make that decision and the clarity, too. I'm just glad I'm at this point. Let's just put it that way.

• 13:06Elizabeth Day?

  We are too. Let's get into your failures or your lessons.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Okay, lessons.

• 13:11Elizabeth Day?

  The first one, it links to what you said your mother told you about being pretty equating to feeling more powerful. And it's your failure to separate beauty from worth. So I'm so interested in your mother and your earliest memories of beauty and what it meant to you and to her. Can you tell us about some of them?

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Well, I was a tomboy. I was, you know, making mud pies and climbing trees and, and, you know, I was the opposite. And I think that's what God does, right? My mom, she wanted a pretty little princess. And I never felt pretty or beautiful or, and I was very, very shy. And she was beautiful, a bombshell. My dad was the bad boy. I mean, you kind of don't have to look too far into that and see how things unfolded, you know, subconsciously for me. But she put a lot of emphasis on that. And in a way, she was kind of joking, but not joking. And I think it was just of the times. Now, it's a different kind of pressure.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  People think, you know, the 90s were so toxic, but I mean, every generation faced

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Beauty challenges and myths and ideals that were impossible. If it was, you know, funny or being seductive, or how to be sexy, or how to get what you want, or how to, you know, manipulate people in our lives using beauty. I just felt it was, it wasn't making her happy. She wasn't in a happy relationship. She was in, I didn't see how her way of doing things created peace and happiness and tranquility in her life. It just, it was chaos. And when we look at relationships when we're young and we think about, you know, abuse in the home, as women, we blame our mothers for staying in it,

• 15:11Speaker 01

  for learning how to manipulate it. Like, don't tell them how much this cost. Don't tell them that we got this. Don't tell them, you know, we gotta make sure we compartmentalize. Like, don't tell them that we were here. Like, you just learn that very young. And I just always never felt good. Cause I have always been honest to a fault. And so that was our differences. I knew very early on, when I experienced abuse when I was young, I didn't tell anybody, and it was by a woman. So I've had really bizarre female experiences from a very young age. And to break the cycle takes a very brave person.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  And so that's what I try to encourage, even in my kids. I just had a conversation recently with my son and said, you're breaking the cycle. It's not a, it's not an easy place to be. It's easy to fall into what you see around you or what you've witnessed. And I think that, no, this is the time. You're hitting a crossroads. It's, you have, which way are you gonna go?

• 16:16Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  And I find I've hit so many crossroads in my life, even as a child, where I had to make decisions. And it all adds up.

• 16:24Elizabeth Day?

  It does. And I think there's so much there. And before I get into it, I just want to say, I want to acknowledge what you said there about having been abused by a woman at a young age. And I'm so sorry that happened to you. And I think there are so many complicated and very nuanced threads there. Because you're right that as a child, we see often what our parents do and we know that it's not necessarily making them happy. And yet, at the same time, we want to please them by doing the things that they're telling us to do. So I imagine that there's this whole embroidery of what your mother's saying about prettiness and power and what you're experiencing

• 17:09Elizabeth Day?

  about your own prettiness and how then that's confused with sexuality before you were ready. And all of that is quite a heady brew. And I wonder how you felt about your own beauty at a young age. Were you aware of it?

• 17:28Speaker 01

  I didn't think so. I didn't, I didn't think about beauty per se, but I knew that I was a girl. I knew I was vulnerable. I remember this woman too, she would bring me Barbies and bring me like a Barbie head to do the hair and to do the things. And so, I don't know, I just wasn't interested in Barbies or dolls or, and it kind of became something I really repelled against. So to in hindsight, look back and see my career and to see how things unfolded and to see how people looked at me in a certain way. It was painful because it brought up things for me from my childhood too. So I just learned how to

• 18:12Speaker 01

  keep going, numb out, you know,

• 18:16Speaker 01

  figure out ways to

• 18:19Speaker 01

  get through it. And I mean, it's hard to be really aware as a child. I mean, you're just not equipped. You don't have the tools and you're not seeing the tools. I mean, my mum and dad were seventeen and nineteen when they had me too. So they're very young and

• 18:36Speaker 01

  You know, I look back and I think, you know, we were all just a bunch of kids.

• 18:41Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Later on in my career, when being on Baywatch, you know, they wanted me to be like natural on the beach, no makeup. And I was like, no, I want to be a Playboy Playmate on the beach. I want to have my, you know, wonderful makeup artist do my makeup and swim underwater with eyelashes and and be kind of, you know, the bombshell on the beach. And it was being, again, rebellious because they wanted me to do one thing, I wanted to do another. I know how to create characters. I know how to embody characters. And that's what I love about being an actress is being able to take a lot of your pain and a lot of your challenges and work them out in another character. And to be able to express yourself that you can't express yourself in words

• 19:25Speaker 01

  or therapy or your best friend, but you can express yourself in an acting class or as an actress. I just think that's how I was doing it. It's interesting to look back and see that.

• 19:39Elizabeth Day?

  It's fascinating. And what did your mother make of you, you know, you being spotted at this football game and then being flown to LA, having this modeling contract with a beer company, ending up on the cover of Playboy multiple times? Was your mother excited about that?

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Well Playboy called me when I was in Vancouver still. And I called my mom and she said, I'd do it. She goes, if they asked me, I would do it. And she said, I want you to get out of this town. I want you to live your life, like, you know, go baby, you know, see where this takes you. And I'd never been on a plane before. And so I just didn't know what to expect landing in Los Angeles. I thought everybody would have parrots on their shoulders. I don't know where I got that from, watching too much Fellini as a young kid.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  But it was, you know, going straight to the Playboy Mansion and and also at the Playboy Mansion, seeing so many beautiful women of all shapes and sizes and different hair colors. And it was different back then, too. In the 90s, I think everybody wanted to be individuals. And I think now it's more about being the same. But I was so shy. I just wanted to break out of my shyness and I did, I guess you could say, in a big way. I seem to do, challenge myself in very interesting ways. But that was one of the things I just, I felt like the first flash of photography. It was just a Playboy cover, it was not nudity, but it was very low jacket that I was holding shut.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  I felt like I was falling off a building. I felt like I'm free. And I know that sounds, you know, crazy, but it was, it was freedom. It was, I'm somebody else. I'm gonna be what this version of what a Playboy Playmate would be, or, you know, an actress, or... Because it was so far removed from my reality that it, none of it felt real. But I felt freedom and I felt, you know, less and less shy. And that was my goal. And I am shy, I'm still shy, but not paralyzingly shy as I was.

• 21:44Elizabeth Day?

  So this idea of being pretty, meaning you can be powerful. In a way, there's a, there's a, there's a sort of tension because you didn't agree with it, but it also did help you feel empowered in many ways.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  But again, even in Playboy, I didn't feel pretty. I felt like I was, it was about sharing my heart, about sharing my soul, about expressing myself. I think that obviously there's so much more to people than, you know, meets the eye. It was deeper than that. It was, my shyness came from abuse. My shyness came from my self-esteem being so low. And me taking my power back was, you know, I didn't know how I was going to do it as a young kid. I wasn't thinking I was gonna be on the covers of magazines or in the public eye. I had a great, wonderful grandfather who was very much into mythology and fairy tales

• 22:44Speaker 01

  and really helped me cultivate my imagination. And I read a lot of books and that helped me. But this was my way of, of dealing with it. It wasn't about, look at me, I'm pretty. It was, I'm brave. I'm, I'm able to be in front of people and, and, and, you know, walk into a room with confidence. Those were the things that I was challenged with and what I, and how I overcame.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  That part of me.

• 23:16Elizabeth Day?

  You mentioned before we started recording that your parents live with you in a cabin on your property. So how is that? How is your mother finding this incarnation of her daughter?

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Well, they've always been supportive. And what I love about my parents is they never taught me how to think. They never taught me what to believe. They've always just been supportive of everything I've done. Except for my first marriage, they weren't that supportive, but they got over that, too. I know. People say to me,

• 23:43Speaker 01

  and then you move your parents on to your property. I said, but I bought my grandparents farm. And my parents actually lived on the farm when they had me. They lived in Cabin Six. And so I created that cabin again for them to move back into. And I rewrote my history and my childhood. And so I wanted to go back to where the trees knew me since birth. And I felt like I can go back and I can redo this. And I did. And that's, and I get along great with my mother in the garden. And that's our happy place. You know, and I don't have to have a perfect relationship with anybody.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  But I do love that we have that time that we can go talk about the vegetables or the flowers that blooming. And now every time we talk to each other on the phone, she's telling me, you know, what she's harvesting and what she's doing. And so that's our, our place. But she still, even if she saw this interview, she would say, your hair, really?

• 24:46Speaker 01

  She's very, it's all about the hair. It doesn't matter what I say in an interview or what I've done. But she's always said, don't touch your hair, or you should have wore, you know, brighter lipstick. Or, I mean, it's just who she is.

• 24:57Elizabeth Day?

  You've said in the past, you're not ready to go gray because that would just be one step too far for your mother.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  But I have let myself go a little bit gray. But I've also just, I, I've, since I did the last show, Girl, I've done three films. I did, you know, The Naked Gun, which comes out August 1st. But I also did Rose Bush Pruning with this incredible director, Kareem. And my hair is gray. And it, I play a mother. I love it. I mean, I love, this is what I find fun about beauty is playing characters. And I love, I think it's funny that people thought at the Met that I wore a wig. I was like, no, I commit. I don't wear wigs. I'm gonna wear a wig when I'm doing a play this summer when I'm playing, you know, Marguerite in Camino Real, because it has to be long cascading hair. And so I'll just put my hair up and I won't bother coloring it, see what happens. I'll make that decision when I take the wig off.

• 25:50Elizabeth Day?

  Camino Real, which you mentioned there as a Tennessee Williams play, and I just cannot wait to see you as a Tennessee Williams heroine. But, but I adore this idea of being playful, because you described yourself as a rebel when we first started talking, and that kind of rebellion against societal convention is so empowering. And we were chatting about the fact that we both have bobs now.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Yes, I love that. I know, I love your hair.

• 26:13Elizabeth Day?

  I love your hair. Thank you so much. And we both have a natural wave, and I think it works well in a bob.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:19Elizabeth Day?

  And for years, I was told by romantic partners, but also by society, that women should have longer hair to be desirable. And actually, cutting my hair was my small act of saying no to that. And I love it because it feels so much more me.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Well, I had a pixie cut not too long ago, and I was in a relationship, and he actually took my hair and cut it. Boom. And I thought, okay, well, I'm going for a pixie cut now.

• 26:45Elizabeth Day?

  Okay.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  And I wasn't ready for it back then. And I, I'm not worried about what a romantic partner thinks of me at this point, which is freedom. Like, I don't think I could have this career right now if I had, I mean, a lot of, my, actually, a lot of my husbands, that sounds terrible.

• 27:02Elizabeth Day?

  It sounds so chic.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  But anyway, I've had husbands, but they're very, you know, jealous, or, and I always am people pleasing, and my life would revolve around them. This is the first time in my life, you know, my kids are grown, I'm, my life is about my career, my relationship is to my work, and I'm having the greatest time ever. Of course, I get lonely at times, but I'm, I wouldn't have been able to do these films at this point, and in these ways. I need that time alone. So I don't know what the future holds, but again, freedom.

• 27:41Elizabeth Day?

  Your second failure is your failure to dress for yourself. You spent years dressing for others and you say it was fun at the time, but you're glad it's in the past. So when did dressing for others start for you? Was it when you were in the public eye?

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Well, I think you start believing what other people see in you and what other people expect of you. And so, I mean, again, I didn't have a stylist back then. A stylist wouldn't have let me walk out the door, you know, if I was wearing some of those costumes. It was just me digging through doors and putting things together and, you know, corsets and hats. And even when I first started doing interviews, when I was on TV, I would go to the Playboy studio and pick out pieces of clothing, you know, half pieces of clothing and have to put them together somehow. And they had a great, just wild closet to pull from, which is, you know, every color shoe, every color corset, you know. So I just started putting things together myself. I remember I did a campaign for Chalk Moose

• 28:37Speaker 01

  and I remember Simon asking me, who styled you back then? It was so genius. I was like, I guess I'm the genius because I put those together. And he had tears in his eyes. He was like, no, don't tell me that. That was incredible. But it was authentic. It was fun. I thought it was... I remember going to Le Dome back then and I found like polka dot stockings with like the seam up the back and a plastic dress and, you know, wearing my hair in a shingyeon and putting eyelashes on. And it wasn't thought out. It was just kind of what I threw together. But then in my first marriage, you know, rock star marriage, I thought, what does a rock star wife look like? And then I just started playing that character, even though it's been fun to see Beyonce dress up as me

• 29:22Speaker 01

  and barbed wire and, again, those red carpet looks. But I created those characters, which I think is a compliment because I think you can't create a... You are not just a costume, you're the person in the costume. And I think what people responded to weren't just the bedazzled pants, but the actual...

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Young girl, having fun.

• 29:43Elizabeth Day?

  Yes, the character you created in that outfit. And you mentioned there that you were creating a character dress wise within your first marriage, but were there other things that you were dressing for? Other occasions? So when you went to promote a film, for instance, in that era, were you under pressure to wear certain things?

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Well, barbed wire, when I went to Cannes, we hadn't even shot a frame of film yet, but I had my workout leggings in my, in my bag and a little black corset and gloves and boots from a photo shoot I had just done. And so I put that together. It wasn't planned. I just came out on the pier and it was funny, boats were running into each other and people were falling off of boats. And I kept going, who are they looking at? Like, what's going on?

• 30:27Elizabeth Day?

  How did I stop it?

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Had no idea. So they just, I just did that.

• 30:31Elizabeth Day?

  I remember that. That's so iconic. And it was your workout leggings.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  My workout leggings. Yeah. Wasn't that exciting?

• 30:38Elizabeth Day?

  So exciting. You are a creative genius.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Well, but I, all these happy kind of accidents. And in the time, at the moment, it was getting a lot of attention, but it wasn't like it was the cover of Vogue. It wasn't fashion, you know, it was me playing. And so I don't know if that was a failure, but in the moment, it felt disrespected or didn't felt appreciated. It didn't feel appreciated. But now that this nineties has made this comeback and people are really kind of looking at that time. You know, I guess I was a little bit of a pioneer. I'll just say that. I'll look at it as a positive. But in the moment, it was courageous because it was just fun and it was playful. But it wasn't fashion. It wasn't, it wasn't cool.

• 31:26Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. And do you feel that people didn't take you seriously as a result?

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Oh, no, people weren't taking me seriously. And, and I think people forget too, that I, I wasn't actress. I was, um, I wasn't just a celebrity because of my personal life or my marriage. I was on Baywatch for many years and I was on VIP for many years. I did a movie, Barbed Wire. It may not be the box office hit, but it's a cult hit and. I was married, it was a high profile marriage. And then people became celebrities for just being celebrities. And I kind of got lumped into that category. But I really wanted to be an actress and I'm so glad I get to do that now.

• 32:04Elizabeth Day?

  I am too. You mentioned the 90s there and we're also living through this era of Y2K resurgence. And there is also this sense that there's a toxicity to it as well in terms of body image. And I wonder what you think about that because you touched on social media and the impact that that is having. What's your thoughts on it?

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Well, I think people have to realize too that all these images are retouched or have filters on them. And people can make themselves look any way they want their bodies and everything. So it's not a good resource for body image, you know, social media. And also every generation has its challenges with body image and with beauty and with what we think is trendy or looks good. Or we try and keep up with the Joneses or we do what everybody else is doing. And there's just always a trade off. You have to support people no matter where they are in their beauty journey. There's no judgment of what people do.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  It's never too late to look in the mirror and to accept where you are in that moment. And to start there, start fresh, start over. It's never too late.

• 33:17Elizabeth Day?

  I totally agree with you and I really appreciate this idea that the Dove Self Esteem Project has of bodily autonomy and body realism, rather than this constant pressure to feel overwhelmingly positive all of the time about who we are and how we present ourselves because that's not realistic.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 33:35Elizabeth Day?

  But I think the most powerful thing for me is as you're doing, stripping back the layers, understanding who I am underneath it all and not trying to chase trends that change all of the time. Because that's the nature of a trend.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Or not trying to chase youth.

• 33:52Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  And that's just been, you know, fed to us is that's to look as young as we possibly can, as long as we can. And I don't know, I think it gets more interesting. You know, it does. I mean, I have my own insecurities and things that I, I catch myself. But I think that's the challenge is to. Embrace those parts of yourself, even the ones you don't necessarily like a lot. It's a journey, it's a challenge, it's a practice.

• 34:22Elizabeth Day?

  Hmm.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  And it's ups and downs, it's two steps forward, one step back. That's just how it is.

• 34:26Elizabeth Day?

  So knowing that this episode is going out and it's going to reach the ears of women, people of all genders, but young women in particular. What would your message or piece of advice be to them if they are going through a struggle with their own body image, with their own acceptance of where they're at on their beauty journey?

• 34:47Speaker 01

  I think that we're our own worst critic and nobody else is judging you. What they, I feel like that was my aha moment was when I realized nobody else is, they're more worried about the way they look. And that I can go to the beach in a bathing suit. I can look at myself in a less critical way. And I know it's a practice. Body image should be based on how do you feel healthiest? And, and I think that's the most beautiful.

• 35:22Elizabeth Day?

  Perfect.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  And believe me, I've made many mistakes. And so I'm old now, I can say these things.

• 35:28Elizabeth Day?

  You're not old, you're just getting started.

• 35:36Elizabeth Day?

  I hope you're enjoying this moving episode with Pamela as much as I am. And as we're speaking about how Y2K had an impact on Pamela, I thought this would be a great moment to tell you about an easy exercise we can all do to help regain control of our own definitions of beauty. The DARF Self Esteem Project have researched extensively on how the Y2K resurgence has impacted millennial women's body confidence. Remember that makeover culture that featured heavily in movies and reality TV? It's ingrained a belief for many of us that physical transformation was essential for social acceptance. Through the Dove Self Esteem Project, I've really enjoyed learning exercises from

• 36:20Elizabeth Day?

  global body image experts to help me work on my relationship with my body. And I wanted to share one quickly with you now. The first step is to think about what unrealistic appearance ideals have cost you, cost our communities and our society. I suppose for me, one of the unrealistic appearance ideals that I have contended with most of my life is the idea that women should remove all body hair, which I think is so sinister in so many ways. And actually, the pandemic gave me an opportunity to experiment and I let my brows just grow out. I let them go feral. And it made me feel really empowered

• 37:00Elizabeth Day?

  to have a stronger brow again. And actually, I've kept them as they grew out. The second thing for you to do is to ask yourself this question, what are the downsides of pursuing current beauty standards? I think the major downside for me is that if you are pursuing a trend in beauty, it means that you're never actually going to take the time to find out who you are. And I've certainly been guilty of that. You're always going to feel like you're failing because trends change. The third thing to do is to think about something in your routines that make you feel good and empowered. Is there something that facilitates your self-expression rather than chasing a certain beauty standard? How can you dial

• 37:44Elizabeth Day?

  that up? And on the flip side, is there anything that feels draining and a chore you can do less of? I think, having spoken to Pamela, that one of the things she's inspired me to try is to wear, if not no makeup yet, certainly less makeup. Because I actually do find it quite draining and expensive. You have to build in not only the cost of makeup, but the time it takes to apply it. And actually, speaking to Pamela about the freedom it's given her to turn up makeup free on red carpets in fashion front rows has been so inspiring to me. So I am definitely going to try that. This science-backed methodology is proven to help women improve their relationship.

• 38:25Elizabeth Day?

  Relationship with their bodies. So try these steps when thinking about your own beauty. What are the things that you're doing because of beauty pressures? And what's something you can commit to to regain control of beauty on your own terms? To find more body confidence building exercises and a supporting workbook, you can go to dove.com forward slash Y two K. That's W H Y two K.

• 38:55Elizabeth Day?

  I remember reading this thing that you said about going makeup free, about how you look back on pictures of yourself in your twenties and you can see that makeup looks good on you.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:03Elizabeth Day?

  But that you started to feel like it didn't, that it wasn't suits sourcing you in the same way or serving you in the same way.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Well, I had a great makeup artist, Alexis Vogel, who I lost, who we lost to breast cancer. She was a really wonderful woman and, and such a girl's girl and so, you know, I just loved her. And we came up with those kind of looks together. It wasn't like I needed to look like that all the time. I mean, when I was home, I wasn't wearing makeup. When I was at the, you know, kids boarding events, I wasn't, you know, wearing makeup. And I do think because photography has changed and, you know, H D, it's so much information that you don't look like that sitting across, like we look different to each other as instead of on camera. It's going to be different because it's so, you can see, you know, pores, you can see wrinkles, you can see everything.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  So I felt a layer of makeup really didn't do any favors. I mean, makeup looked really great in black and white photographs back in the day, you know, the Marilyn Monroe days flash photography. And then in the nineties, still it was film. And so you still were chased around by paparazzi with these film cameras with these bright lights. And, you know, you can't look bad when you're flooded with light. And I feel like now you just see a sea of photographers with no lights on their cameras, just looking for that picture that's going to be sellable, which isn't necessarily the most flattering. And I felt like, why am I doing this? And

• 40:31Speaker 01

  And you know, a lot of people have relationships with photographers to make sure the photos look good. I thought, you know, this is just game is way too thick. This is way too too much that I'm just going to go out like this. If I put makeup on, I like a lot of glam, a big glamorous look like in a photo shoot or something very fun. How I personally like myself is is just completely barefaced. Even if I put a little bit of mascara on, sometimes I feel like it just closes my eyes. So I'm experimenting. I don't know what my next incarnation is going to be. But in the meantime, I'm just starting from scratch, starting over.

• 41:07Elizabeth Day?

  I love that you've kept hold of the iconic Pamela Anderson 90s brow, though. It really suits you.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  This is just it. I don't have anything in my hair. I don't have anything in my eyebrows, nothing. No, this is just, I think, I know, I, I always had a thin brow. I mean, I was younger, I guess I had more brows, but I guess I've plucked them over a lot in the 90s, I guess. But no, this is just, there's not any brow, anything in my, I have nothing on my face.

• 41:32Elizabeth Day?

  And it's more than enough.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 41:35Elizabeth Day?

  It is. You look so beautiful. Okay, not that that's the point. It doesn't matter what I think. It matters what you think.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  No, it doesn't matter what I think. It's just acceptance. I know this is crazy. It's a practice. But I think we should do like Make It Free Mondays, like, you know, like the Make It Free.

• 41:48Elizabeth Day?

  I love that idea.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, or Make It Free Dinner Parties.

• 41:50Elizabeth Day?

  That's such a brilliant idea.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, why not? Just to kind of see, just to kind of see where we're all at.

• 41:56Elizabeth Day?

  I need to start doing that.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  And then scoop it all on after.

• 41:58Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Later, the next day.

• 41:59Elizabeth Day?

  Okay, your final failure is failing to own your own identity, being typecast as a sex symbol, and how it actually made you feel. How did that make you feel at the height of it?

• 42:13Speaker 01

  I don't like being a sex symbol. I mean, I think it's not very sexy. I think we all aspire to be sexy in our relationships, but sexy for the world is I don't know, it brought a lot of attention I didn't like. But I, I hate to say that because I'm not complaining, but I do feel that is kind of a slippery slope where you are presenting yourself to the world like this and you get this attention back, that can be even scary at times. Me not wearing makeup and me being at this age, coming into my, you know, this part of my career, I felt like it was important for me to, in my personal life, to, you know, be more natural.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  I want to challenge myself and, and become, and to be, present myself in different ways. Because women are many things. We're not just the wild animal, you know, between the sheets.

• 43:07Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  And, you know, people did, I guess, you know, people, I did have, you know, people in my life, lovers or, you know, relationships that would really, you know, expect things of me or present themselves in a way where I thought, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second, you know, I'm not a, not, maybe not so much what you think. And it was, sometimes it was pretty jarring, but I'm glad I'm in this place now. I'm looking back and think, well, you know, I got to be that person. I got to have those experiences and those are all part of me. And there's some places that I would, I, now I compartmentalize my life a little bit more. I present myself to the world one way. I can be in a relationship one way. I can still, you know,

• 43:51Speaker 01

  be wild and crazy when I want to, but it's not 24/7.

• 43:55Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. You had that experience of getting yachts to crash into each other in a pan, which you said so casually and so, it must be such an extraordinary thing to be living in. But what was the attitude of normal people, not people that you were in relationship with, not people that you were making TV series or movies with, but people who would see you on the street at that time, when they were projecting this sort of sex symbol notion on you. How did they respond to you?

• 44:26Speaker 01

  I mean, it was pretty wild at that time. I mean, people didn't have these social media accounts. So when people saw you, they didn't see so much of you. So it was more, you know, I had a lot of people, you know, follow me or break into my house or chase me around. I'm glad I, I mean, I experienced it. I felt like Mrs. Magoo. I don't know how I navigated that. I just felt like it was always, somehow I navigated that time. And being at the Playboy Mansion or being, you know, in, on Baywatch and having, you know, there was thousands of people on the beach at some point. There, it was wild and coming to the UK and having photographers fall down escalators and like meet you at the airport when they could greet you at the gate back then,

• 45:10Speaker 01

  you know, or come on to the plane even. It was different. It's different now. So it wasn't even because of the way that I was dressing or how I looked. It was just a different time. And you can create a circus around you if you want to. You know, you can wear your dark glasses and your hat and, you know, have security guards with you and that just draws attention to you. Or you can just go out for a walk and get a coffee and say hi to people, which is really kind of a nice place where I'm at right now.

• 45:38Elizabeth Day?

  You mentioned it being scary, some of the elements of that time in your life, not only because people were breaking into your house or perhaps you were boarding the plane, but I wonder if...

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Which was pretty crazy.

• 45:50Elizabeth Day?

  I mean, I just don't, it's extraordinary that you survived it. But I wonder if also, and I'm sorry if this is inelegantly expressed, but did you also feel strange about it because of what you'd been through as a child? And your relationship with sexuality?

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Well, and that's why I think kindness and non-judgment is really important. I think that's something to be practiced because everyone's fighting a hidden battle. Everyone's fighting, everyone has gone through things that you don't under, you'll never know. And I think to be self-critical is very damaging. And also to be critical of others is very damaging. But that's also a practice. And drawing that attention to me, subconsciously and consciously, and not having addressed what I'd gone through as a child. Those things collided many times in my life where I made choices in my life that were...

• 46:50Speaker 01

  Understandable now, but in the moment, crazy. And then trying to raise two children and protect them from this

• 47:00Speaker 01

  certain kind of gaze you're bringing upon yourself. So I, that's when I started realizing, oh, shit. This is I, I've got to make a change. I've got to figure this out. And it took me a long time. Took me a while. And I don't know if I figured it out yet, but I do get to have great, honest conversations with my sons. And that is what has been great about being so close to them and be able to do, you know, create businesses together and to create something. And Brandon is so protective and Dylan is so smart. And to be able to create these businesses where they're like, Mom, you created something in the world. We are going to make it so you can keep being you. And we just want you to keep being you.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  And we are going to create businesses around you where you can have the freedom to be the artist that you're meant to be and be able to have the life that you deserve. So it's fun to kind of turn this all into a positive, but they're definitely, it was a rocky road.

• 48:01Elizabeth Day?

  Hmm. Brandon said something really beautiful when you made that documentary. He was quoted in Variety saying, the category she was in before, she was just very objectified. And her whole career was just positioned towards the male gaze. And he said that making the documentary was about him giving back to you what you'd given to them. That space to to be yourself. And I thought that that was so wonderful.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're pretty, they're interesting kids. They're very smart and visionaries and yeah, they have a whole plan. They are not, they, they would just want to go from one thing to another, to reclaim the narrative and to reposition me, which I, I do feel repositioned and it's because of them. I didn't have them to do this, by the way. I didn't know that we were going to do all this together at this point. I didn't know how it was all going to turn out. But it's wonderful that we get to experience this. It really is very healing and very empowering and I'm very lucky.

• 49:05Elizabeth Day?

  It's testament to you as a mother also. What is one thing you think that that experience of fame has taught you?

• 49:15Speaker 01

  You're going through things, but you're going through things with a collective audience. And that's why I like to be able to do things like this. I like to talk about it because I know there's many people that are going through similar things. And so this gives me the opportunity to talk about affirmations, talk about reprogramming ourselves, and how we can all make mistakes, even in public, and survive them.

• 49:40Elizabeth Day?

  You said that you don't know what your next incarnation is, and you've already got some parts lined up that you're about to play. Is there one role that exists in history that you really, really would relish the chance to play?

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness, so many. I'd love to be in Glass Minajerie. I'd like to be Miss Julie. You never know, in theatre, you can do anything. But I think in film, I just want to work with great directors. I'm living my dream. I'm so excited to dig deeper and see what I'm made of. I don't know yet. I didn't know I could sing or dance, and I did that on Broadway. So it's limitless. We're limitless. And I think it's facing our fears. I'm terrified to do this play, but that's my happy place.

• 50:26Elizabeth Day?

  Well, I have absolutely adored every second of this conversation.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 50:30Elizabeth Day?

  And talking to you, I'm reminded of one of your favourite things, which is the garden. And that idea of digging deeper and planting seeds, and then nurturing them, and seeing them flourish, and having the patience to do that, and to create something so truly beautiful. And I think that's what you have done and are doing. And I want to say a personal thank you, woman to woman, for what you have taught us all, purely by being you, Pamela Anderson. Thank you so, so much.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  My name just sounds so funny to me.

• 51:04Elizabeth Day?

  Does it?

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Yes, it does. And just think, you can replant your garden every year, and you have to rotate your crops.

• 51:10Elizabeth Day?

  I love that you say your name sounds funny, even to your own ear. And your middle name's Denise, isn't it?

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:15Elizabeth Day?

  It's so unlikely, for some reason.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, isn't that funny? And my real last name is Huitienen. And they changed it to Anderson when they came to Canada from Finland.

• 51:25Elizabeth Day?

  Maybe the next incarnation, you will change it back to your Finnish surname.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I think it's, I think, yeah. But again, it's something that when I hear it, I go, oh. So I mean, I have to get over that, too. This chapter. I'll feel, I am proud of my life. I am proud of, I have nothing to be ashamed of. I know that. And my kids tell me that, which was really, we're all just doing the best we can with the tools we've been given.

• 51:52Elizabeth Day?

  Well, I can't wait to read and witness your next chapter. Thank you so much.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. This was fun.

• 51:58Elizabeth Day?

  As you've heard from Pamela today and from the exercise I shared, this simple two-step approach to unpacking what motivates your beauty routines can truly help build your own body confidence and self-esteem. To try it yourself and for more support, such as journals and additional exercises, go to dove.com forward slash Y2K. That's W H Y two K. You can find the link in the show notes. Please do follow How to Fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.