Beauty Archivist: Pamela Anderson’s Beauty Evolution Reminds Us of the Power of Image
The skinny brow revival is due in no small part to the recent cultural reevaluation of the look’s biggest proponent - Pamela Anderson. Whilst Pamela has been a beauty icon her whole life, it was the announcement of Hulu series Pam & Tommy that first led to a massive increase in 90s Pamela inspo pictures, initially simply side-by-sided with stills of Lily James on set. It was then reported that not only was the Seth Rogen series specifically not sanctioned by Pamela, but that she found its production extremely distressing, starting a new conversation about a woman who was mocked and reviled during the 90s and 2000s and who, shock horror, on retrospective examination appears to have been thoroughly mistreated.
This new awareness of Pamela’s story, the release of her own autobiography and documentary, alongside fashion’s seemingly never-abating obsession with 90s and 2000s nostalgia references, has created an endless appetite for the look with which she is synonymous. Gunmetal smokey eyes, frosted lips outlined in brown and that pencil thin arched brow.
Pamela Anderson was discovered in 1989. The cinematic, platonic ideal of becoming a star that happens to so few. Kate Moss was “discovered” in an airport, Gisele was eating McDonalds at a mall, supposedly. This idea gets so baked into their legend because it suggests someone so singularly beautiful and charismatic that fame couldn’t help but find. This feels especially true for Pamela. Anderson had no real ambitions of stardom before being spotted by a TV camera at a football game, her image projected onto the big screen in the stadium and to viewers at home. Once everyone saw her, everything that followed happened quickly; Playboy called and she was on the cover months later. This was still a relatively niche fame until in 1992, when she signed on as CJ in Baywatch and would reach the kind of incredible fame that deems you public property.
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The photos of Anderson posing as “the blue zone girl” show her super fresh-faced, looking much younger than her 22 years with super tousled, highlighted 80s metal style hair. She doesn't yet have her signature brows. On her first Playboy cover that same year Pamela is much more recognizable thanks to her new, blonder and more up-to-date hairstyle. Yet she still hadn't landed on her signature beauty look - this Playboy face is still very soft, with natural brows and nude eye makeup.
As early CJ on Baywatch, all the hallmarks of classic Pamela Anderson makeup start to appear but everything retains this relative softness. The brows are thin but they are not darkly penciled, her lip is warmer, the smokeyness is still quite soft. The sunlit beach setting, natural light and windblown hair give her a kind of tomboyish wholesome quality that cancels out a bit of the glam.
All elements of the look we associate with Pamela didn’t really converge until a few years later in the mid 90s. Around this time two big things happened in Pamela’s life. Firstly she starred in a movie, Barb Wire. A project she hoped would launch her as a serious film actress, just as Jane Fonda had experienced with Barbarella.
As the titular Barb Wire, Anderson played a bounty hunter in a dystopian 2017. She told Premiere magazine: “Who’s that character? She rides a motorcycle, shoots guns and is an action hero? I want to do it. I got the comics and said this is me. Nobody else can play this - this had everything I want to do.” Unfortunately Barb Wire did not create the impact Anderson had hoped for and was widely trashed, with critics ridiculing Pamela, her performance and her appearance. Just a month after the release of Barb Wire, in June 1996, Penthouse published the infamous tape that was stolen from Anderson and Lee’s home by a contractor. A one-two punch that prompted a backlash for Pamela that is only now being re-examined.
“Every area of makeup is sharply delineated, the borders of her features exaggerated. The barbed-wire armband that Pamela tattooed for real during filming, rather than sitting through the extra hours of makeup, completes the look.”
In the images of Anderson promoting Barb Wire at Cannes in 1995, there is a harshness to her beauty look. Her brown lip line is clean and crisp, her lipstick is several shades paler in a cool toned pink nude. Her skin is full coverage and perfectly matte. Her brow a curving single line in a dark brown shade. The blue of her eyes stands out against the black smokey eyeliner that rings them, her inner tear ducts are sharply pointed in black too. Several shades of warm brick shadow blend across her lid into a matte white highlight below her brow. Every area of makeup is sharply delineated, the borders of her features exaggerated. The barbed-wire armband that Pamela tattooed for real during filming, rather than sitting through the extra hours of makeup, completes the look.
Barb Wire itself showed a version of this look amped up even further, with one critic writing in the New York Times: “Ms. Lee’s makeup is painted on so heavily that she may not even be able to change expression”. There is a tough girl energy to this makeup. She has lost all the soft lines of CJ and her look feels strong and assertive. There is also an embrace of the artifice. The bold clean edges to her makeup announce themselves as makeup; there is no blending of a lip line to make it look natural. This is the look that is now obsessed over as iconically 90s, but at the time Anderson was mocked fiercely for it.
It's interesting that it is this version of Pamela, which feels the most rebellious and empowered, that provoked a strong negative reaction. It reminds me of the viral format for beauty tutorials that shows a face split down the middle with “no makeup” on one side and “what men think no makeup is” on the other. Or the idea that men think the Kardashian look is not a lot of makeup because the colours are neutral and the edges soft. All of this glam is present in beachy CJ and on the Playboy cover, and I’m sure those looks took a similar amount of time in the makeup chair too, but there is something more palatable about the pretense of natural. It’s not saying the quiet part loud. The fact that Anderson is so carefully and obviously made up in this era shows participation on her part in her status as a sex symbol, and therefore ownership of her beauty and sexuality that might explain a little of the uncomfortable reaction.
Once landing on this look Pamela has worn some version of it ever since, even in this year on the cover of her newly released autobiography. But I should also mention a new Pamela look that debuted on her Netflix doc, no make-up at all. And truly no makeup - not that ‘no makeup makeup’ men supposedly are into. Although these two beauty choices, heavy makeup and no makeup, are about as far away from each other visually as possible they both have the exact same Pamela Anderson DNA. They are very personal and in control, they are not about pandering or being appropriate, and they both allow her to flex the kind of beauty that gets you spotted at a football game and turned into a global superstar.
Now the world is catching up to Anderson and finally reappraising her legacy, she has described seeing herself celebrated as a fashion and beauty icon: “Not that I’m a pioneer, but sometimes it's funny when I see these people using me on the moodboards at photoshoots and things…. Back then everyone was kind of making fun of me and I was just having a ball.”
Words: Grace Ellington
