Hey, howdy, hey, my beautiful bi bookworms! Hope all of my favorite bibliophiles are alive and well.
Have you ever seen a billboard that just … sticks with you? When I first moved to L.A., there were these billboards with a blonde girl everywhere, captioned: “Save the cheerleader, save the world.” These were ads for the smash hit series Heroes, and the girl was Hayden Panetierre. I had just moved to L.A. to pursue an acting career, and Panetierre was seared in my brain as a sort of totem of that time — both an indicator of success and a beacon for something I hoped my career could achieve.
Cut to nearly twenty (!) years later, and I saw that she had a memoir coming out called This Is Me: A Reckoning, and I just knew I had to check it out and see where the rest of her story went. But why am I writing about it here in this particular column? Read on to find out.
But first, I should go over a few important disclaimers. First and foremost, there will be SPOILERS in this review of Panetierre’s autobiography. Content warnings include: death, 9/11, disordered eating, body dysmorphia, sexual exploitation, domestic violence, postpartum depression, and substance abuse.
All set? Then off we go!
This Is Me: A Reckoning covers the life of Panetierre from her birth right up until modern day, with the actor in the driver’s seat. We go over her childhood as a child actor, from her first commercial gig at 8 months old, through her Heroes rise, personal turmoil, and now to her current level of self-acceptance.
There are two major things I like about Panetierre’s memoir and how she goes about telling her own narrative. First is her writing style — it is casual and funny while still incisive and level-headed about her own work. It kind of feels like going to lunch with a good friend who made it in Hollywood who is catching you up — there’s plenty of jokes, self-awareness, and just enough of an insider scoop to keep things interesting.
Panetierre has been in this actor’s life since she was a baby, and is honest about what it takes to hone her instrument and deliver the goods every time like a professional. (Also, I had no idea how many memorable things she was in as a child actor, from voicing a major character in A Bug’s Life to a regular on a soap to Malcolm in the Middle to Remember the Titans.)
Second, Panetierre is really honest about holding herself accountable and approaching serious subjects with the gravitas they deserve. She is open and real about how her postpartum led to abuse of alcohol and other drugs to the point that she could not be a responsible parent to her child for years. She also talks frankly about the domestic violence she endured from a partner, and how the abuse warped her mindset to try to defend him. I really felt for her as the chapters went on (especially through the tragic death of her brother), and she has clearly done a lot of work in treatment and in therapy to bring herself to a better place to battle her inner demons. All of these subjects are written about sensitively and from a trauma-informed perspective.
Regarding her bisexuality, Panetierre also stands firmly in her truth about her orientation. Usually in these types of memoirs, people will dance around talking about themselves being bi, maybe with an allusion to a tryst that lasts a few lines. Nope — the actor takes this on head-on with Chapter 7 titled “Girls”. Up until then (and later on), the actress talks about some crushes on and relationships with men. But with Chapter 7, she addresses things directly:
I also had another secret: while I didn’t want to dress or act like a girl, I sure as heck wanted to spend a lot of time with them. And not just as friends. I can’t remember when the feelings first started, but it must have been sometime around kindergarten. While my friends were spending hours at lunch or recess obsessing over what boys had noticed them, I was oblivious. Aside from the 9-year-old Chex actor who cost me the job and the cute Kodak boy who’d sent my nervous system into overdrive, girls were much more my speed. There was something much more soft and approachable about them. Girls … made sense to me, and I was attracted to the energy they radiated … girls made me feel warm and welcome, and also a little bit turned on.
Later on in the chapter, Panetierre continues:
I’ve never told the public I’ve been with women. And I say ‘been’ with women because I haven’t fallen in love or had anything beyond sexual relationships with any. Though I suppose that could happen someday. But I have been attracted to women as long as I’ve been attracted to men.
At a certain point in my career, actors started sharing their sexual preferences far more publicly than they had in the past. And I didn’t want people to think I was hitching my wagon to a fad. Although because sexual feelings are fluid, and they always have been, I knew it wasn’t a trend at all. … I don’t look down on anyone who is public about who they’ve been with, and who they sleep with. In fact, I celebrate it. If you want to live your truth out loud, do it. It’s just never been my time to discuss this, until now — when I have the confidence and trust in who I am. … Now I just need to live my truth. This is me.
This may feel like a hard viewpoint to grasp in a more open time and age like today. But as someone who was living in Hollywood as an actor during this period, she’s talking about? I completely get it. It may feel like internalized biphobia or self-bi erasure, and that’s not entirely wrong. But during this era (early 2010s), there was both more marginalization and more pigeonholing for queer actors who dared to come out.
There was an air of dismissal of it being considered trendy in a post-“I Kissed A Girl” world, and often romantic roles to the A-list leads who came out dwindled to the very few (if any) queer roles in the mainstream movies. So I applaud Panetierre for finally coming out on her own terms — it’s a lived truth I resonate with very deeply.
(Oh, also, for those sticklers who may be complaining she doesn’t use the term “bi” to describe herself here? She very much did so during the promotional campaign for the book, claiming it out loud for the first time.)
This is Me: A Reckoning is an intimate, searing portrait of an actress who has come into her own, following Hayden Panetierre’s meteoric rise and inner turmoils as she navigates both the highs and lows of life in Hollywood, New York, Nashville, and beyond, proving that Hayden is a survivor — and far more than just a girl on a billboard.