Ed. Note: I am not a writer or an academic, but I did drop out of high school to become a stripper - which is all I need to write poorly and erratically about big boobs and little outfits.
Hey - let me waste your time.
With all the talk online about twee revival and “indie sleaze”, I have naturally been guiding my neon yellow speedboat towards safer harbors: 90s camp glamour and it’s natural icons Pamela Anderson, Anna Nicole Smith and Carmen Electra….of holographic spandex dresses, and of perfectly fake tits.
Today, while I was putting in my hours in the google image search mines looking for some specific photos of Pamela Anderson at a skate park (shown above), I was reminded of a formative television show that I had mostly forgotten about: 1998’s VIP - starring Pam herself as the title character Vallery Irons. Predictably, I got caught up in a massive cyclone of looking at all the clothes, trying to pirate every season and foaming at the mouth with enthusiasm about my findings on twitter. Twitter is not a great place to be enthusiastic for me, as most people are too busy giving themselves gangstalking psychosis or arguing about podcasts to care much about seeing screengrabs of Pamela Anderson’s bedroom vanity table and pink marabou slippers. I don’t blame them, as one man’s loser pursuit is another man’s book deal.
Side note: I came across an account on Poshmark that is selling off costumes from the series - including this iconic leather set that has added Barb Wire appeal.
If anyone reading this has $3,500 - $35,000 dollars they would like to donate to my brave journey to be God’s most clammy and uncomfortable leather-clad soldier - please reach out.
I watched VIP religiously as an adolescent at my father’s house where his TV got 3-5 channels at any given time if you fiddled with the antenna enough. We watched a lot of Lawrence Welk (which is it’s own adventure of outfits, boobs and glossy lips covered in one of my favorite Lisa Crystal Carver essays from her 1996 book Dancing Queen), we watched a lot of Fawlty Towers and forgettable Sunday afternoon movies. This is around the time I stole a VHS copy of Basic Instinct from the local library in my Spottie Dottie backpack (I needed it to be mine) and I was ready for more trash than PBS could offer me. That trash was delivered to me by a Riverside angel in the form of Vallery Irons Protection.
I know at one point VIP was a late night only show, but I have clear memories of watching it on TV in the weekend afternoons - which is also how I watched the pilot today on YouTube …. which we will recap next time because I got really sick of writing this almost immediately because with every word I am haunted by this TikTok screenshot Liz Harvey tweeted the other day:
I’m giving blog :(