Pamela Anderson, against the Internet and machismo: this is how the ‘first’ viral sex video ruined the actress’s career

“Of course I care, I’m in that video just like you,” Tommy Lee assured Pamela Anderson, who corrected him: “No, just like me, no”. With these words, the then television star reproached her husband that she had much more to lose. That was precisely how it happened. The leak of the home video showing the two having a sexual relationship was a terrible blow for the actress, but not for him.

Anderson’s career was derailed in the mid-’90s by a video that never made it out. The story of the robbery in this video is as bizarre as Tommy Lee himself. He and Pamela met, and after four days of partying they got married in Cancun. She went to live in his mansion. At the time, Lee was in the middle of a reform and ended up laying off the workers for not bowing to his capricious changes of mind.

One of them wanted revenge and managed to steal the safe from Lee’s mansion. Inside was the happy tape, and the only thing that occurred to him was to upload it to the internet to, on the one hand, make a profit and, on the other, to get revenge on Tommy Lee. All without stopping to think about Pamela. That stolen video tape became the first viral video of an Internet that was beginning to pick up speed.

Pamela Anderson was the victim of unstable Tommy Lee’s behavior (don’t forget that they were divorced three years after that sudden wedding, and that Lee mistreated her and went to prison for it). But Anderson was also a victim of the double standards of a society that judged and judges men and women differently.