Manipulated photo from Kristin Nelson's series My Life With Pamela Anderson (2010). Images courtesy the artist.

Surfing the internet for a Grey Cup art project in November 2008, Kristin Nelson landed on a saucy image of Pamela Anderson. It immediately provoked a spark of inspiration that she couldn’t explain but also couldn’t deny. Thus emerged the seed of a body of artwork called My Life With Pamela Anderson that documents, in finely crafted fiber works and manipulated photos, an imaginary yet deeply felt relationship between the artist and the celebrity.

The Winnipeg-based multi-disciplinary artist has often explored the cultural representation of identity and sexuality, yet she had no feminist or deconstructionist impulse going in.

“I had a lot of hesitations about using her image,” Nelson says, “but in working out those thoughts I decided the main purpose would be to get to know her.”

In some ways the work is typical of Nelson’s art. She strives to get to know people and places and to reveal over-looked or un-thought-of aspects of them to herself as much as to her audience. The much sought-after Drag King Trading Cards (2007 and 2010), for instance, featured portraits of butch women in packs like those of sports stars for sale at corner stores. These subversive collectibles allowed Nelson to collaborate with and explore her own relationship to the queer community.

Manipulated photo from Kristin Nelson's series My Life With Pamela Anderson (2010). Images courtesy the artist.

Currently, however, Nelson’s interest is finding more universal points of entry to her art. Her most recent subject, however, proved a challenge: How do you get to know someone so famous, not to mention already a well-worn subject of cultural criticism?

“It was important for her character that I stay quiet about the project and not justify it,” Nelson says. As she researched lesser-known aspects of Anderson’s life, Nelson decided that she would put herself in, thereby going beyond a critique of celebrity consumption to a playful take on how we absorb the lives of the famous into our own.

In the most striking pieces, pin-up pictures of the actress have been transformed into shimmering, larger-than-life cross-stitch portraits executed in yarn on aluminum panels. Also, in line drawings made from yarn and nails and manipulated family photographs, Nelson and Anderson hang out, watching TV and riding bikes, like old pals in gauzy dreams. The whole effect softens the celebrity’s official image and transforms preconceptions of its audience, too.

Large cross-stitch tapestries from Kristin Nelson's series My Life With Pamela Anderson (2010). Images courtesy the artist.

On the one hand, Nelson’s work is laugh-out-loud funny, a luscious manifestation of celebrity idolization. On the other, the needlepoint technique highlights Nelson’s patience and care for her subject. “She’s a very dehumanized person, even in scholarly discussions by feminists,” Nelson points out. “She’s something to bitch about, or insult. She’s talked about in terms of either-or, but nobody is just an image of themselves.”

Indeed, in Nelson’s images, Anderson is neither Madonna nor whore, but something less sensational—a focal point for talking about sexuality and popular representations of it. “I’ve learned to see her in a different light, rather than categorize her as ‘other’ than myself,” Nelson says.

Currently, she is making another series of smaller cross-stitches about what she imagines was a real turning point in the actress’ life, this time patterns generated from the landscapes of a well-known leaked video from the mid 1990s of Pamela and her then-husband, Tommy Lee, having sex on a boat. The hope is that people may recognize the images. As Nelson explains, “Discussing is more interesting than showing.”

The website “When Will Amy Winehouse Die?” reads like a macabre count-the-jellybeans contest. How many days does a junkie have left to live? Leave a guess, and a “pre-condolence,” like this one: “It’s not like you didn’t see this coming.” (This commenter chose July 11, 2008.) “We’ll miss you,” pre-eulogizes another, with a slightly more optimistic expiration date of March 11, 2011. If you’re correct, you’ll take home an iPod touch—presuming the gadget doesn’t fall into obsolescence first—and you’ll be crowned “Mr. or Mrs. Death.” “Amy is on her way out,” the site reads. “As the world is profiting from this decline, we thought it only fair that you should profit from it too.”

The same company runs the same contest for Britney Spears—this one for a PlayStation 3. It also hosts a half-dozen Europe-based websites for those looking to see pictures of Angelina Jolie’s tits or watch videos of guys wiping out on their Girls motorcycles. On the Winehouse death page, thousands have left their guesses alongside pictures of the singer in decline. Many entrants, it seems, have chosen their own birthday, with comments attached. “Thanks for the iPod!” one reads. Several say: “Die, bitch.” Others riff on Winehouse’s own lyrics: “You should’ve gone to rehab. Yes Yes Yes!”

It may be less overtly cruel than the putting a bet on when Amy Winehouse will die, but a lot of celebrity journalism appears to be a countdown to death. We watch bad girls like Winehouse stumble before us under the 24-hour surveillance of paparazzi. Lindsay Lohan gets drunk and disorderly, and crashes her car. Britney Spears is photographed without panties while the world debates whether she’ll commit suicide. Gossip blogger Perez Hilton registers another million hits, and the Bratz Pack keeps the party going.

Though her anti-rehab anthem sold more than fi ve million albums and made her an international star, Winehouse has, of course, been to rehab several times. Who hasn’t? B- and C-listers air their traumas on the latest reality show, Celebrity Rehab. Exclusive centres seem more like resorts than hospitals, with yoga, shiatsu and garden parties. Hospitalization is no longer shameful. It is trendy.

Star Magazine: rock bottom, indeed

But while the young women who are famous bad girls—Amy Winehouse, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton—check in and out of treatment, they seem unconcerned with redemption. Rehab always seems like someone else’s choice, the advice of publicists perhaps, and our suspicions are confirmed when a week later they’re up to no good again. They remain willful and unapologetic, refusing to conform to any sense of how women are “supposed” to act. They won’t be victims, patiently suffering in silence, and they aren’t trying to be anyone’s sweetheart. We can try to make them stay in rehab, but they say, “No, no, no.” “I told you I was trouble,” Winehouse coyly sings, “You know that I’m no good.” When the world yells, “Behave,” they only give us the finger and march, empowered, toward their own death.

As viewers of this spectacle, we’re caught between pity and condemnation. “How sad,” we say, that young women are cruelly targeted by the media, contorted by our demands that they be innocent but not childish, sexy but not slutty. We may hope they get the help they need, but most of the time, we’re less generous, believing they are getting what they deserve. They are getting paid; it’s not our fault they are too stupid, and obsessed with fame at any cost, to get their lives on track. We claim to worry about their health—hence the constant supervision of weight, pregnancy, reckless sexual behaviour. After all, don’t they know that they are role models? Rarely, if ever, do we allow that this is how they choose to live, that they don’t want to be Grace Kelly and they aren’t interested in our approval.

Society as a whole once held celebrity as the paragon of what we all could be: glamourous, rich, witty, beautiful. Scandals were kept out of the press, often by the press, infidelities buried, abortions arranged; we knew little of the excesses and depressions stars faced when there was no one around to watch them. America’s Sweetheart could be our dream, even though we knew nothing about her at all—in fact, because we knew nothing about her at all. Now, America’s Sweetheart is an album by Courtney Love, another debauched rebel rockstar.

In February, New York magazine published photos of Lindsay Lohan re-enacting Marilyn Monroe’s famous “The Last Sitting”—taken just weeks before her death in 1962—a creepy homage to a woman who pioneered the now well-worn path of sexy self-destruction, performed in front of the camera for all to see. Critics charged that the photos eroticized and exploited Lohan’s own downward spiral. “They are sexual, funereal images,” wrote Ginia Bellafante in The New York Times, which “ask viewers to engage in a kind of mock necrophilia.” These eerie photos link beauty and death, equating glamour and sickness, connections that are usually well hidden or airbrushed out.

Never before has so little been kept private; now everything is published, and every inch of women’s bodies scrutinized. As David Denby wrote in the New Yorker last fall, “every part of a star’s existence, including the surgical scars and the cellulite deposits, belongs to the media—and to the public.” Rumours that Britney is pregnant are dashed when the paparazzi snap a shot of her period-stained panties. Amy Winehouse’s damaged skin is shown in high magnification on UK news sites. She is diagnosed publicly, doctors showing up in the media to speculate about cause and treatment. “Notorious junkie failing to keep up with beauty regimen,” one headline read in June. Another article calls her “a shadow of her former smooth-skinned self.”

These photos show that the illusions that prop up celebrity culture—flawlessness and mystery—can fail. What could be more subversive in an industry based on beauty than to be publicly ugly? There is a kind of bravery here—however nihilistic—that these bad girls refuse to be our royalty, to play the role of demure ingénue. “In a nation of finger-wagging, name-calling, letter-writing, comment-posting, mean-spirited, stalking busybodies,” writes Heather Havrilesky in Salon, “maybe the crotch flash is the ultimate subversive act.”

Like them or hate them, the bad girls have an honesty to them that is difficult to find elsewhere. They do what they want, sleep with whom they choose, and refuse to be guided by a morality that’s not of their own making. As Lakshmi Chaudhry writes in The Nation: “[Paris] Hilton, Lohan and their peers represent a radically new generation of celebrities who receive attention—or more precisely notoriety—because they violate rather than perform traditional modes of femininity, especially when it comes to matters of the heart.”

They “no longer feel the need to hide their appetite for pleasure, status and attention behind a giggle or a teary smile,” she writes. “It is progress—of a sort.”

I didn’t enter a guess about Amy Winehouse’s death, or Britney’s either. I’ll wait until the end to see how the story plays out. And while we, the viewers, may be all-too focused on watching these women self-destruct, the situation isn’t entirely hopeless. Today’s bad girls are tearing down the feminine ideal instead of just redefining it. It is progress. We’ll get there in the end—but it will take more than 12 steps.

Jason Andersonis a Calgary-born writer who lives in Toronto. His short stories have appeared in Taddle Creek and The IV Lounge Reader. He writes about music, movies, and literature for The Globe and Mail, Toro, Saturday Night, eye Weekly and Toronto Life. He has met many famous people, including Kevin Bacon. This Magazine literary editor Stuart Ross sent him some questions while he was covering the Cannes Film Festival.

Are you scared of famous people when you meet them?

Rarely, but that’s because I meet them while doing interviews, as opposed to spotting them in restaurants. In other words, the subject and I each have a reason for the social exchange and usually get it done as pleasantly and smoothly as possible. I get nervous, though—I think I blushed when I met Zhang Ziyi yesterday.

In a world without celebrities, what would we do with ourselves?

Hire new royal families and slaughter them all every century or so. More people might vote, too.

You’re a very prolific freelance journalist. Is it tough to squeeze in fiction writing, which doesn’t guarantee a cheque?

Very difficult. The secret to making a freelance living is volume, volume, volume. I have just enough time to work on fiction but, sadly, none whatsoever for Xbox.

How does your film and music writing influence your fiction?

Whether it’s fiction or not, I always try to write catchy—y’know, like a good Manilow song. I never want to bore anyone or write anything that sounds fussy. Also, my high film and music consumption always leads me to new ideas, though I’m trying to limit the input because there aren’t enough hours in the day. For instance, I’m not going to buy the Police Academy DVD box set.

Are you working on anything big?

A novel that should be done by the end of 2004, as long as I don’t mind being broke. It’s about assassination plots and stand-up comedy. I’m going for a hybrid of W.G. Sebald and Carl Hiaasen.

Stuart Ross is a celebrated poet and teacher. His latest book is a collection of new and selected poems called Hey, Crumbling Balcony!

1.

I have always been fortunate to exist in two worlds: the grey, maudlin one into which we are all born, and that place where names are spelled out in lights. Though my origins are unspectacular, fate has periodically placed me in the role of ambassador between these realms.

The first such incident took place in 1956. My mother’s cousin was the talent booker on The Tonight Show starring Steve Allen. I was 17 when I went to visit New York. It was my first taste of Big Apple razzle-dazzle and I lapped it up like strawberry wine. On the last night of the trip, I went to the studio where The Tonight Show was filmed, under an arsenal of lights that gave the place the unmistakable scent of baked ham. My mother’s cousin valiantly led me through the pre-broadcast chaos of frenzied makeup applications and dance-routine rehearsals. I spied Mr. Allen working out a tricky figure on his piano. I worshipped him for his dapper wit, but my mother’s cousin said he didn’t have time for me in this bustle.

As a consolation prize—I intend the phrase to be ironic—my host took me to see the evening’s special guest, with whom he was acquainted. Everyone was. We’d seen her on our screens since she was a child. America’s Little Miss was now all grown up—and how! A singer, a dancer, a Broadway sensation, an actress without peer. And there she was in front of me, lounging lengthwise in a crimson taffeta dress, a pair of black tap shoes dangling off the edge of the sofa. She rose to meet me. I may have been an inch or two taller than her, but I still felt diminished by her presence. I rubbed my palm on my best trousers before clasping her impossibly tender hand. I shook it and released it before realizing it was meant to be kissed. She tittered at my nervous gaffe. I felt as bashful as Andy Hardy. I noticed an open bottle of Dom Perignon on her dresser—I have drunk the same ever since. My mother’s cousin said, Okay, Denny, let’s go, Madam needs her quiet time before the show. I don’t mind the company, she said, not one bit. She lifted a champagne flute to her lips. I felt a curious tingle as she ran her eyes over every inch of me. My mother’s cousin apologized nervously and said he had to get me back to my seat. I was too dazed to protest his hateful insolence, too dazed to insist he leave me here in this sublime creature’s presence forever. Oh well, she said. Maybe your chaperone will give you a weekend pass later. It’s been swell meeting you, young man. She held her hand out again. As I touched it, I realized my palm was slick with perspiration again. Though I felt hot with shame, she did not flinch at my secretions as I lifted her hand and brushed her skin with my trembling lips. She was utterly luminescent. Good evening, I stammered. As I released her hand from my slippery mitt, I felt her finger give my wrist a brief, exquisite stroke. And a very good evening to you, she said.

My mother’s cousin closed the door and ushered me down the hall. Jesus Murphy, he muttered, the lady’s like some kind of African tiger. You’re lucky you got outta there, kid.

And that was how I met my first movie star.

2.

My next foray into that world came some years later, when I was living in Los Angeles. The ’60s had not yet begun to swing. A business associate for whom I had made a great deal of money invited me to spend the weekend on his yacht. Boating was a great passion of mine—call me a cliché, but I believe the high seas are full of adventure.

When I arrived at the dock, I noted that another passenger was already familiar to me. She wore a wide-brimmed black hat with a yellow ribbon. Her dress stopped well before a pair of calves that Michelangelo would have killed to carve. I had seen every single one of her movies and none came close to capturing her full beauty in that moment, as she stood facing the morning sun. I did not approach her: living in California made me contemptuous of the sycophants who attach themselves to stars like fleas on a beagle.

As soon as we were on board, my business associate greeted us with two glasses of Dom—a good omen. I noticed a smile at the edges of his mouth when he introduced us—was my proximity to this goddess a reward for sound business advice? While this possibility disturbed me, I couldn’t help but be grateful for this chance to meet the world’s most coveted woman. Haven’t I met you before? she asked. I would’ve remembered that, I said. I suspect you would have, she said with eyes that promised some of that adventure I was expecting.

Until the moment we reached dry land again, we were inseparable. We talked and laughed, secure in the knowledge that this time belonged to us solely. Her life was very complicated, as we all know. I chose my words carefully, not wanting to trouble her further. Between the fits of laughter, she spoke of many woes. She inspired such a sense of chivalry in me that I silently pledged to destroy all of her villains. For years, I wrote anonymous threats to Peter Lawford and Tony Curtis. I once spotted Joe DiMaggio in a restaurant many years later and would certainly have assaulted him had he not been three times my size and already inebriated.

But that was all in the future. What mattered was not the ugly aftermath but those heartfelt conversations on the deck and the too few loving moments in our suites when those flawless calves were mine to savour. We should get back together when I’m back from England, she told me on the dock. Her car was already idling, the driver already clutching the steering wheel. She never contacted me again, nor responded to my messages. I pleaded to my business associate to arrange another meeting. That’s not how it works, the bastard told me, it was a one-time-only thing.

When I learned of her untimely demise, I crawled into two crates of Dom and did not escape for a week.

3.

My next encounter occurred in the same decade, but it might as well have been a new century. I had received a posting to London by the financial consortium that employed me. I immersed myself in the city’s outrageous swirl of high society and counterculture. An art dealer I knew was notorious for his parties, which all of London’s most glittering children would attend. They formed a vanguard of young artists and aristocrats, an intersection of Top of the Pops and the House of Lords.

At one such happening I was clutching a glass of mediocre champagne when I spied a young beauty across the room. He was more boy than girl but the era’s new flair for androgyny made me, shall we say, more experimental. As if ashamed of the feminine delicacy of his features and the Fauntleroy curls of his golden hair, the young man otherwise affected the look of a dockworker—black leather coat, motorcycle boots, a belt built for assault and battery.

I was mesmerized by this piece of rough even before I realized his identity. He was a guitarist of much renown, a man they already called a god. My irrepressible host sidled up to me and asked if I’d like an introduction. I was tempted to say yes, but I knew the young man would not appreciate any gesture that possessed the slightest trace of formality. Besides, I had come directly from the office and my clothes were Savile Row, not Carnaby Street.

I made subtle progress toward him, drifting ever closer to his circle of fellow thugs and harlots. The air was such a stew of intoxicants, I was sure my progress would go unnoticed. When he slipped a few steps back from his entourage, I took him by the elbow. You’re a terrific player, I said. Oh, yeh, he said, savagely wrenching his arm away from me. His words were slurred and his manner brusque. What do you lot know about music? I told him I had a friend at Atlantic Records
in New York who kept me up to date. My young charge recognized the name of our mutual friend. I told him I’d even heard his new record, which had yet to be released. It’s fantastic, I told him, a very powerful match of passion and philosophy. Yeh, it’s all right, he said with sudden sheepishness. Underneath his surly exterior I saw all the tender awkwardness of a teenage boy. I could see how he longed to be held, to be comforted. He was far too delicate for this place.

Before we could say anything more, a sallow-faced young woman interrupted us. Who’s this? she asked. Some Yank, he said. His dockworker bluster returned to his features. Yeh, he said, he was just telling me what a genius I am. I took this as my cue to leave. Good to meet you, I said. Yeh, he said, now piss off. But there was something in his faraway eyes that promised future intrigue. It came two hours later, when I found him incapacitated in a back bedroom, lying on a pile of coats on the floor. His monstrous belt was already unbuckled. I answered his signal and began a night of magic.

4.

New York, 1983. It was an era of transition. The end of disco left a void no flashdance could fill. The rise of the yuppies was good news only for the vermin who sold Brooks Brothers suits. But things were looking up for me, after the nightmarish series of cataclysms I’d suffered through the previous decade. My legal travails were too sordid and ridiculous to get into here, but I will defend my reputation to my last breath.

It was in these circumstances that I made one last extraordinary foray into that other realm. I was in the employ of a footwear emporium not far from Wall Street—shoes have always been a great passion of mine. I had just retrieved a pair of red pumps from the backroom when I saw her enter the store. She was like a ray of sunlight in a land that had known only darkness. I recognized her instantly. I’d have been a fool not to. I had spent the night before in my Lower East Side apartment, drinking several bottles of sparkling wine and watching one of her most famous films on television. She was a teenager then, a raven-haired temptress whose only passion was a horse. Andy Hardy was in the movie, too, and everyone was very concerned about a big race. To be honest, it had been many decades since I’d seen the film and I had trouble following the plot.

What matters is that this merciful angel had arrived. She was older now, her features softened and distorted since her days of horses and big races. But it was her. It had to be. I couldn’t contain myself. Oh my God, I said, throwing the box of pumps to the floor. It’s you. It’s really you. I want to tell you that I think you’re incredible. I’ve seen all of your movies.

When she responded with a look of shock and confusion, I realized I had made a grave error. I had been indiscreet, calling attention to this empress of stage and screen when she was attempting to travel among the masses unmolested. I had made a scene and was ashamed of my transgression.

Hey, said the harridan with the pumps, you dropped my shoes. Maurice, the store’s manager, grabbed my shoulder. Dennis, he said, is there a problem? I tried to gather my dignity, but the smell of her perfume—slightly waxy but certainly French—was too much for me. I fell to my knees. Oh sweet mistress, I cried. You were fantastic in Cleopatra! And oh God, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof!

Mister, she said, you got me mistaken with somebody else, I just came in from Rochester.

Dennis, cried Maurice. Get yourself together. To my Aphrodite he said, I’m very sorry, ma’am, he’s not usually like this.

She began to back away but I couldn’t let her escape. I clutched her ankle and she shrieked. A man entered the shop. What the hell?! he said.

Help me, Andy, this guy’s crazy.

Get your hands off her, said Maurice as he pulled on my leg.

The harridan with the pumps began to scream.

Let go of my wife, you crazy fuck, said the man who had entered. I thought I knew his voice. Could it be my lady’s longtime on-again, off-again paramour? But no. I looked up and saw a squat, furry fellow who was not Richard Burton. He wasn’t even Welsh.

Oh well. What I had in my grasp was certainly enough for me.

You see, my recent turn in fortune had given me many opportunities to reflect on my life. I believed that I had used up all the time I could have with Hollywood’s seraphim, that mediocrity was my destiny. But no, I had been granted a reprieve, here at Cedric’s Fine Shoes, here in a place where a man who was not Richard Burton clawed at my arms and another man yanked on my legs and punched me in the small of my back.

In another age, I would have been a courtier of great renown, a man of influence and prestige. Alas, not now. In our age, the chasm between our world and theirs is so much wider. It took all of my strength to cross that divide, to hang on to those famous legs and take one last liberty. With the grace of a saint, I placed my lips on the tip of that good lady’s slipper.

Jason Anderson is a Calgary-born writer who lives in Toronto. His short stories have appeared in Taddle Creek and The IV Lounge Reader. He writes about music, movies, and literature for The Globe and Mail, Toro, Saturday Night, eye Weekly and Toronto Life. He has met many famous people, including Kevin Bacon.