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Girl from Ladysmith makes powerful impression as defender of animals

Saturday, February 23, 2008

CREDIT: Reuters Pamela Anderson: During a recent visit to Paris, she delivered a letter from Brigitte Bardot to the Canadian ambassador.

I have been cruel to, and taken predictable cheap shots at, Pamela Anderson many times over the years. She has been an easy target: Big hair, big lips and big babooms. Jiggling all the way to the bank. And that barbed wire tattoo is a sad cliché.

The girl from Ladysmith is 40 years old now, has two kids, three former husbands (if you count the one she married after she offered him sex to settle a gambling debt and is now divorcing), at least two successful TV series under her belt and is still successfully strutting her stuff.

Earlier this month she was in Paris where she appeared at the Le Crazy Horse, the famous burlesque club, and stripped for an appreciative audience.

Le Crazy Horse was the scene of one of my favourite lines in a movie — What’s New Pussycat — where Woody Allen works as a dresser for the strippers. Peter O’Toole asks what the pay’s like. Woody replies, “Twenty dollars a week. It’s not much, I know. But it’s all I can afford.”

Actually, reports suggest the Anderson striptease — complete with black body stocking on the back of a Harley Davidson — was less a piece of titillation and more a homage to the woman she adores: 73-year-old French actress Brigitte Bardot.

Ironically, I was in a university library the other evening (I lead a cloistered life) and found myself thumbing through a copy of The Guardian’s Weekend magazine, an upmarket publication, that also featured Pamela paying tribute to Brigitte.

In a Q and A feature, she’s asked which living person she most admires and why. “Brigitte Bardot for defending animals and not caring what people say,” she said. Pam the reincarnated Brigitte? Well, Bardot’s not dead. In Paris, Anderson delivered an anti-seal hunt letter from Brigitte to the Canadian ambassador.

The feature also altered, albeit slightly, how I felt about Anderson, mainly because she uses it as a platform for her, ahem, pet love: PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). I actually started to admire her. And like her a tad more. I’ve always liked the fact that she’s everything Canadians aren’t supposed to be: Sexy, loud, brash, over the top. She’s an antidote to our collective greyness and she seems to be enjoying herself immensely.

Her most treasured possession, she says, is her Linda McCartney Memorial Award for promoting vegetarianism (she also says she’s depressed by people who call themselves environmentalists and eat meat).

The living person she most despises? “Anna Wintour (editor of Vogue) because she bullies young models and designers to use and wear fur.”

Who would she invite to her dream dinner party? “Jack the Ripper and Anna Wintour.” Ouch. What would her super power be? “Having people’s mink coats come back to life to attack them.” I have a friend who once had lunch with Anderson and said there was absolutely nothing there, but in her Q and A she demonstrates a quick sense of humour, such as when she’s asked what she most dislikes about her appearance: “Being bald — I wish I didn’t have to wear these big, blond wigs every day.”

Better still, her answer to life’s most important lesson: “Opportunity only gives you knockers once.” Now, that’s funny, even if in her case it isn’t strictly true. She’s been given knockers on numerous occasions: bigger knockers, then smaller knockers, then big ones again. She was once quoted as saying about her breasts: “It’s a love/hate thing. We’re very close.”

Anderson’s most intelligent response comes when she’s asked what she considers her greatest achievement. “Diverting the ridiculous amount of attention heaped upon me to my activism for PETA.”

Celebrity activism is nothing new, but it’s cool to see today’s sex symbols following in the steps of Bardot, who retired from movies in 1974 to work full-time for animal rights.

Sure, it’s also self serving, since it buffs up your image, but it draws attention to issues that might otherwise escape media attention.

That was true recently when Bo Derek came to Vancouver to draw attention to the fact that thousands of unwanted horses are crossing the border into Canada to be slaughtered and sent to Europe and Japan, where horse sashimi is a delicacy. The practice has been outlawed in the U.S.

Who knew? Well, we all do now, because Bo can still draw a crowd. So too can Pamela Anderson.

She’s played the blonde bimbo role to perfection these past few years.

But I have a hunch the bimbo’s a whole lot smarter than she pretends.

Ian Haysom is news director of Global News in British Columbia. He divides his week between Central Saanich and Vancouver.

ihaysom@globaltv.com