If rumors—and talk-show banter—are to be believed, former baywatcher Pamela Anderson is getting better acquainted with her co-star Liam Neeson’s naked gun. The are-they-aren’t-they couple have been seen holding hands, giggling like new lovebirds, and lip-balming on live TV, as reports of a true romance spread like wildfire across the internet.
And while they are officially just “enjoying each other’s company” (that old chestnut!)—and romantically linking the leads in a film does admittedly feel a little 2007-movie-marketing—the notion of The Naked Gun leads actually dating is warming the cockles of our cynical hearts.
Pamela, of course, has been having something of a renascence. The 2023 documentary Pamela, a Love Story helped to further unpeel the layers of her celebrity onion, delving into her playboy past (the magazine and the lovers) and her quasi-complicity as one of the most objectified women on the planet. She was a hypersexualized symbol of a very particular strand of femininity—enormous breasts, miniscule waist, skimpy outfits—underscoring yet another impossible beauty standard for women. And she was—is—both a victor and a victim of an overtly sexist era. I don’t think her legacy will ever fully reconcile her self-representation with our ogling culture. How she looked at the time, and how we all looked at her, can never really be detangled.
But New Pamela hits different, not so much de-sexed as re-sultry-ed. She’s wearing ’60s cocktail dresses and little lacy gloves, swapping platinum blonde for sophisticated platinum jewelry. She is in her Capote Swan era, dressing like a debutante who lunches at La Côte Basque. A woman fine-tuning her look is nothing new, but it’s such a far cry from her red bikini-ed ’90s heyday. There’s something alarmingly refreshing about a woman who once had such a public-facing, over-inflated form looking great, and—dare I say it?—seemingly dressing for women more than men. And that’s to say nothing of her taking off the layers of makeup, and concealing nothing about her 58-year-old visage.
There’s an overarching feeling like Pamela Anderson is out of fucks. After years of pursuing a manicured perfection, she finally feels at home in her own skin—and she’s got a nice new beau. Life does not end at 58 (duh!), and though Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte are ending their onscreen tale of 50-somethings’ love lives, Pam’s is apparently only beginning.
