Why Pamela Anderson Is the Ultimate Beauty Icon at 49

A boyfriend once told me that all my style idols have big breasts and big hair. It didn’t take long to see what he meant — Dolly Parton is my favorite musician/spiritual adviser, looking up at me from a tattoo portrait on my thigh. Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman has always struck me as both beautiful and badass. Even horror queen Elvira, with her massive cleavage and raunchy one-liners (“Tell them I was more than just a great set of boobs. I was also an incredible pair of legs”) informs my style.

But among that pantheon of glamour queens, Pamela Anderson, who turns 49 today, presents something raw and unique. Although she was born in Canada, her bouncing, bleached-to-almost-white hair and bouncing, fun-house implants bring up a Southern aesthetic that makes me nostalgic for my pickup truck and Bud Light roots. She’s offering up lust with a winking, smokey cat eye and nude lip that belies her inner resources.

Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson. (Photo: Getty Images)

Anderson deftly walks the thin line between Anna Nicole Smith and Marilyn Monroe, never quite as obvious as the former or remote as the latter. Toss in a bit of Madonna’s savvy calculation, and you’ve got a singular bombshell.

First as the fresh-faced but buxom assistant on Home Improvement’s show-within-a-show Tool Time, then filling out that trademark red bathing suit on Baywatch, she became the biggest sex symbol of the ’90s, before it was standard knowledge that women could use their sexuality to empower themselves. She turned her personal brand into a business well before the Kardashians, who very well could have been inspired by her definition of feminism.

“The true meaning of feminism is this: to use your strong womanly image to gain strong results in society,” she says.

Bare and beautiful. Pamela Anderson on the February 1999 cover of Playboy. (Photo: Playboy)

Over the span of 22 years, Anderson appeared on the cover of Playboy more than any other model. The sex tapes, the plastic surgeries, that barb wire tattoo that once encircled her upper arm are all markers that she wears her gender playfully, like a drag queen. She’s always seemed in control of her “more is more” image, always had something of the little girl playing dress-up for no other reason than that it makes her feel pretty.

As she once wrote in her novel, Star, possibly quoting fellow bad-girl icon Mae West: “I’d rather be looked over than overlooked.”

In a world of “no makeup makeup” where “natural beauty” is king, Anderson is a beauty maverick, a high-camp icon who would have been at home as a Warhol painting or in a John Waters movie. As she told Esquire, in 2005, “Natural beauty takes at least two hours in front of a mirror.” Instead, Anderson is an example of the transformative power of beauty, the magic and the play of creating something that’s anything but natural.

Anderson’s larger-than-life looks served as muse and inspiration to art world darlings like Richard Prince, Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha, and David LaChapelle, whose photographs of Anderson are short on clothes and high on glitter.

Short hair, don’t care. Pamela Anderson ditched her long strands for a short cut back in 2014. (Photo: Getty Images)

Then, in 2014, she chopped off her Stripperella blond waves, fearlessly deconstructing her own image and debuting a pixie cut that somehow looked even more glamorous. Now 49, the actress is also a mom (to two boys) and has been an activist for animal rights, veganism, and other causes, as well as acting as a spokesperson for people living with hepatitis C.

Always, underneath it all, Anderson has shown a sweetness and slight vulnerability. Anderson, who has said she trusts animals more than she trusts most people, now has her own cruelty-free beauty and shoe lines, one more reason she’s still an icon inside and out.

But growing up doesn’t have to mean toning down — she still appeared on the cover of the final nude issue of Playboy, wearing a choker that read “SEX” and a generous helping of fake lashes.

In March, three decades after Baywatch, she even slipped back into that iconic red bathing suit for a Missguided fashion shoot.

And maybe it’s her refusal to give up her sexuality as she ages that is her most revolutionary move yet.

Pamela Anderson is owning aging, and we love it! (Photo: Getty Images)

“I actually like aging,” she told W Magazine. “I have great older female role models in my life, including my amazing mom, who have glitz, glamour, and all sorts of fun. Getting older isn’t the end. I know I have so much to look forward to.”

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