If This Year’s Oscar Noms Are Any Indication Popcorn Actresses Are Finally Getting Their Due 

“Academy Award nominee Pamela Anderson.” Unfortunately, that’s not a thing. However, it was never even a possibility until this year.

Who would have thought that Pamela Anderson, Mother of Bimbos, would ever deliver a performance worthy of those famously snobby Oscar voters? As for me, I always knew the Baywatch star had depth. Anderson, in addition to having been one of the better judges on RuPaul’s Drag Race, frequently lends her voice and influence to numerous charities and nonprofits including the California Wildlife Center, the National Domestic Violence Hotline, Climate Revolution, and PETA. That latter mistake was just because she was friends with PETA’s star-f*cking former senior vice president, but she does genuinely care about animals. All of this is to say that Anderson obviously had an Oscar-worthy performance within her, and even though she missed a nomination for The Last Showgirl this year, it’s still noteworthy that she was part of the conversation. Moreover, considering Demi Moore’s recent career-first nomination for The Substance at age 62, it’s safe to say that a popcorn actress revolution is upon us.

Like Anderson, Moore was frequently relegated to sex symbol roles, or worse, tabloid headlines, throughout her career, earning more attention for her libido and body size than her actual talent. That said, the talent was there, even when Moore chose patently bad projects like The Scarlet Letter. She made Ghost, a supernatural romance hinged upon the sexiness of pottery lessons, feel realistic. She matched Sean Hayes’s levity during her guest stint on Will & Grace. She even held her own against Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. Sure, she could appear distant and calculating on screen at times, but even Meryl Streep has her off days. 

The Gagworthy Gagatron of it all is that Moore was not only passed over for praise, but often roundly criticized. Whether she was earning the highest salary of any female actor in history (at the time) for 1996’s Striptease, or appearing naked on the cover of Vanity Fair while seven months pregnant, Moore couldn’t catch a break. She was dubbed overly ambitious, needy, egomaniacal, and/or greedy, depending on the time of day and how badly Courtney Love was f*cking up that week. Despite doing everything that her fellow male actors had been constantly praised for, Demi was ultimately cast off by Hollywood after a couple of flops, leading her to retreat from the spotlight. Finally dubbed a “popcorn actress” by that one unnamed producer whom we all hate now (in my head, it’s Harvey Weinstein), she ultimately accepted her fate as an Oscarless movie star and devoted herself to motherhood. 

Nevermind the fact that she pushed herself to the physical brink for Striptease, becoming unhealthily addicted to working out. Nevermind the fact that she had gone to rehab at age 21, traumatized by a rape at age 15 and her mother’s numerous suicide attempts. Nevermind that she relapsed amid all the criticism for her marriage to the younger Ashton Kutcher, causing her to abuse alcohol and Vicodin yet again. She had the money and the fame, which, in the eyes of the American public, erased all the trauma and made any complaints meaningless. 

Thankfully, society’s attitudes towards women have evolved in the last decade. Old white men don’t run all of Hollywood anymore and Oscar voters have diversified, expanding to include every corner of the industry. Women and minorities have slipped through the cracks, creating space for female stars to be both popcorn and Cabernet Sauvignon actresses, bimbos and passionate intellectuals. And while Pamela Anderson and Demi Moore may have felt that they needed to fit squarely into one category, they’ve now embraced that they can be all of the above. It feels tragic, of course, to look back and realize that both actresses have been engaged in an agonizing, protracted rebellion against the norms that Hollywood laid out for them. But the fact that Anderson and Moore have shed their perfected personas and embraced their complexity is a perfect twist ending. It’s only right that we should now celebrate and honor their liberation, ushering them and other ambitious women to step forth and grab the gold. And if Demi Moore doesn’t win Best Actress for The Substance then I will boycott The Oscars forever … until next year.