Hot Take Saturday with Sheila Horevag
Under-sexed 40 somethings cringed recently when Pamela Anderson
revealed a video now looking like one of Flavor Flav's old flames, than like a 90s bombshell that was a fantasy of many.
The decline of Pamela Anderson is not something unique to pop culture, baseball has someone going through a similar
Brigitte Nielsen-like transformation and his name is Derek Jeter. Jeter enters Saturday's game versus the Royals hitting 60 points below his career average, and with just seven extra base hits in 2014. With Pamela we blame age and maybe too much Tommy Lee parties, with Derek we quietly accept his decline as graceful.
The Kansas City Royals gave Jeter a $10,000 BBQ grill, the Cleveland Indians gave him three scalps and a blanket without smallpox. At the same time Pamela Anderson gets an appearance front page tabloid magazine photos not wearing make-up, looking like she was addicted to more than just fame. For her growing old involves no grace, because at the end of the day it is a double standard for men and women in America.
When Derek Jeter beds yet another supermodel, we clap and nod our heads in agreement. When Pam Anderson gets divorced again, we tremble in the fetal position wondering how she has so thoroughly destroyed her life.
They both peaked in the 1990s, but they both have generally been paid too much money for their skill sets that have never exactly been elite.
Jeter is 58th all-time in WAR, that trails Paul Molitor who mostly DHed and Lou Whitaker who is best known for his forgetting his jersey at the all-star game. Derek Jeter was paid $34,000 per at bat in 2010, it took Lou Whitaker three weeks to make that in his final season.
Pamela Anderson starred in such cinematic treasures as Barbed Wire and Naked Souls while getting $60,000 for every episode of the Emmy-winning thriller Baywatch. Bill Murray made $9000 for Rushmore, Pamela Anderson could make that with just one photo in her heyday.
The point is as Pam's looks went, so did her career and image. When Derek Jeter can't hit a little ball anymore he's stately and refined, an example to the game and to humanity. Everyone wants to be Derek Jeter, teams are fawning over him in 2014 giving him new cars and all the fresh corn-on-the-cob he can eat in a lifetime. Pamela Anderson gets a
front page, above the fold picture of her looking less than attractive.
Until this double standard ceases to exist we will be destined to embrace a culture that rewards mediocrity for men, and blasts the same levels for women. I for one will pass on the Derek Jeter farewell tour as he is showered with gifts and praise for hitting a ball by the pitcher and into center field 3000 times.
As a woman and a baseball fan I must, because felt hats from pimps outside US Cellular in Chicago should be shared by both Pam Anderson and Derek Jeter, otherwise we as a society are failing each other. We should recognize centerfolds and center infielders the same, hold them in the same regard for their good times and bad. I have no problem with fans cherishing things, but understand what your confetti and over-priced trinkets do to maintaining equal rights among the sexes. If you don't your daughters will be treated like all those girls in India.
-Sheila Horevag is a columnist with the Sacramento Bee and an entertainment reporter for Women's Journal Weekly