Pamela Anderson

In this article, I suggest that Pamela Anderson embodies the white trash aesthetic ideal. I do not include any pictures, since images of her are ubiquitous.

The term “white trash” conjures up images of poor, inarticulate Caucasians, trailer parks, pick-up trucks with shot gun racks, violent arguments, tattoos, torn porno mags, K-mart, explosive and unstable relationships, wife beating, child beating, dirty faces, dirt roads, and small, run-down farms. Usually, somewhere along the line, there’s a retard in the family tree, a few crazies, and women run to fat so badly they break their lawn chairs every few months just by sitting in them. There’s always the blue light from a TV glowing from each window at night, uniting people in a timeless collective consciousness, like a great bee hive humming with commercials and sit-coms.

And in the trailers, mobile homes, and back rooms of “Urban Cowboy”-like bars, there’s centerfolds from Hustler and Playboy taped up over the sink, or cash register. And so it becomes every little white trash girl’s dream to be “discovered” for the beauty of her tits, get suddenly famous and rich, drink as much beer as she wants, marry a brooding rock star, and star in her own TV series, where she gets to shop, handle a gun, and show off her assets. Like everything in the white trash world, success is as much of an accident as failure. White trash people are permeated with an alcohol fueled despair. They lack the imagination and hope it requires to see a new future for themselves. Success can only fall from the sky, if it ever comes. Or it can defy all laws of logic, like the hundreds of times characters on TV have discovered treasure on the beach, money in caves, or diamonds in a trash barrel.

The story of white trash is the story of Pamela Anderson, and it is story that she repeats in her performances, on the screen and off, each mirroring the other. Pamela Anderson, much like her character in VIP, was accidentally “discovered” at a sports event (in VIP she was discovered while working at a hot dog stand), and instantly became the spokes model for Labatt’s beer. Her, uh, exposure, in turn, led to her being the cover girl of Playboy more than five times. As she accumulated more and more money, she in turn, accumulated more and more surgical enhancements, becoming closer and closer to the ideal pin-up. She got to marry and divorce, numerous times, a violent and tattooed rock star. It was the epitome of the white trash girl’s dream -- she wants a rock star, but he must be what she’s used to -- violent, alcoholic, abusive. And true to form, Pamela goes from getting an order of protection to a reconciliation in short order. (A poem about white trash life captures this aesthetic. )

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