Pamela Anderson on Overcoming Abuse, Heartbreak and Never Giving Up: 'I Did It Against the Odds'
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Pamela Anderson wrote much of her new memoir, Love, Pamela, from her grandparents' former farmhouse on Vancouver Island, not far from where she grew up. It was there that she began to retrace her life, back to the beginning.
"I do feel like I've definitely figured out who I'm not over a lifetime and now I'm remembering who I am," Anderson, 55, says in this week's PEOPLE cover story. "And who that little girl was before anything happened to her."
A young girl, who liked "bugs and snakes and nature and climbing trees." And a young girl who began to lose trust of adults after she was hurt and molested at a young age.
"In my case it was a female babysitter who sexualized me very early, forcing me to play weird games on her body," recounts Anderson. "She threatened me not to tell anyone. Or else."
"I was trying to protect my brother," says Anderson. "I didn't want it happening to him and so I would do things so she wouldn't touch him. And that's where it all unraveled. I was very ashamed. I didn't tell anyone. I didn't know what to do."
Jonny Marlow
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Nor did she say anything a few years later, after she was raped by a man some ten years older. It happened when she was around 12 or 13 years old. After that, she says, "Part of me just gave up. That was kind of another nail in the coffin."
Growing up, she remembers not wanting to look in the mirror.
"I never thought I was pretty," she says. "I always thought I was athletic and funny. It kind of catered to my insecurities and probably because of my early sexualization and my shame about it all, I didn't want to feel that way. I didn't like that I had any kind of qualities that were attracting the wrong kind of attention."
Over time, she retreated into a world of imagination, nature, and books.
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Looking back, she writes, "I could not have survived my adult life without the strength I learned early on."
After moving out on her own at age 17, she appeared in a Canadian beer commercial. Before long, Playboy called – and the rest is history.
"I think about divine timing," Anderson says. "I needed to take my power back as a sexual being, as a woman. I remember looking at the pictures, thinking I still didn't like them but they're okay. And then I thought, 'Well, I really flipped the script.'"
Jonny Marlow
"On one hand I was vulnerable," she says, "but I also felt how could it be any worse than where I was? And if I have a choice with my own body I'm going to take it. I'm going to chose for myself."
Her story, as told in her memoir and the new Netflix doc, Pamela, a Love Story, both out on January 31, is one of strength and perseverance. "I did it all on my own," she says, "and I did it against the odds."
"I'm sure there are people struggling just like I have," says Anderson, "and I wanted to tell those people you're human and you're not bad."
"I want to help," she says. "When someone tells you not to say something, that's when you need to say it. It's the shame of the secrets – or the embarrassment. Predators pick victims who they know they're going to humiliate in ways that are going to be hard for them to tell anyone."
She hopes people will find the book "empowering." Says Anderson, "It's kind of like the beginning of understanding my entire life." Most of all, she says, "I wanted to make sure it was from the heart."
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.
