Pam wears clothes ... most of the time, anyway. And one of her favorite materials is "pleather", or imitation leather made of polyurethane film, which in turn comes from oil.
Pleather first appeared some 30 years ago as a cheap alternative to the real thing, but has found a new lease of life on the bodies of vegetarian Hell's Angels and dominatrixes.
PeTA promotes pleather too, actually going so far as to tell kids that the mark of class, or the "magic words", on an item of clothing or accessory are "All man-made materials"!(1)
Pam is also a fan of fake fur, made from polymerized acrylonitrile. One gallon of oil yields about three jackets.(2)
Pam's preferred clothing choices take centuries to degrade, and neither Pam nor PeTA is running a recycling program.
Meanwhile, Pam is a participant in PeTA's campaign to bring the real leather industry down. In February 2000, PeTA released a video narrated by Pam exposing alleged cruelties in the leather industry.(3)
Shortly after, she appeared on the Regis Philbin show, only to be confronted by a co-host wearing leather pants. "Backstage, I said, 'Oh, no! She has leather pants!' I almost couldn't come out. I was devastated," she told PeTA.(4)
Yet when Pam's own movie career is on the line, none of this seems to matter!
In her 1996 movie Barb Wire, Pam was dressed in real leather right down to her G-string! What was that all about, Pam?
Meanwhile, as late as 2007, she finally turned her back on the most environment-friendly clothing choice she ever made. Pam has often been credited for turning Ugg sheepskin boots into a major fashion trend, and even wore them during a campaign against Australian sheepherders(5) - until someone finally told her what they were made from!
"I'm getting rid of my Uggs," she wrote on her website. "I feel so guilty for that craze being started around my Baywatch days. I used to wear them with my red swim suit to keep warm never realizing that they were SKIN!"
"I thought they were shaved kindly. People like to tell me all the time that I started that trend - yikes!"(6)
Given that level of ignorance, it came as little surprise in June 2008, when Pam auctioned off her 2000 Dodge Viper sports car to raise money for PeTA. Part of her rationale was, "I'm a terrible driver. It's just not a good idea for me to have a Viper."(7) Had she failed, then, to wonder what her posterior was parked on all those years? According to the bumph distributed by Julien's Auctions, "The soft-top convertible roof, luxurious leather interior, front spoiler and racing pinstriping make this car look sexy even if you don't"!(8)
We all have our moments of weakness, so we'll cut Pam some slack and assume she was the LAST PERSON ON THE PLANET not to realise what Ugg boots are made from. But even she acknowledges knowing they had something to with exploited sheep, and that's a breach of the PeTA code right there!
NOTES:
(1) Pleather vs. Leather A PeTA webpage promoting man-made over natural.
(2) See Ho, ho, ho! Plastic Santas? (incl. "Just What Is Evolutionary Fur?") by Teresa Platt, executive director, Fur Commission USA, Nov. 20, 1998.
(3) Pamela Anderson Lee Exposes Animal Cruelty in the International Leather Trade, PeTA press release, Feb. 17, 2000.
(4) Pamela Anderson Has a Cow over Leather Pants on Regis Show, PeTA press release, Oct. 5, 2000.
(5) PeTA pulls the wool over community's eyes, Daily Telegraph (Australia), Nov. 2, 2007.
(6) Pamela Anderson tosses away Ugg boots, Expo Say, Feb. 26, 2007.
(7) Pamela Anderson sells Viper to raise money for PeTA, ecorazzi, June 10, 2008.
(8) Pamela Anderson's 2000 Dodge Viper RT/10 hits the auction block, Edmunds Inside Line, June 11, 2008.