Anna Nicole Smith

 28 December 2021

Anna Nicole Smith. She was very sweet and optimistic, and of course beautiful. Her life was incredibly tragic, the fact that she was so pure just makes the tragedy so much worse. I watched a few interviews on youtube. Her public image was humiliating, and hard to believe it was okay to treat a sweet woman like that on tv. Like, every interview was about her body, and the men interviewing her would interrupt with some sexual innuendo. 


I remember her being a "dumb blonde", and as an edgy teenager I definitely laughed when she died. I'm sorry about that. Nowadays I really love her, but much of what I know about her has been filtered through the male-gaze of the 2000s. Like, back when she was alive I definitely did not think women in Playboy magazine were honorable. I wish I could say I've risen above viewing her with the male-gaze. But that's very naive of me, I still like looking at sexy women and men (heck, we all do). I maintain that she had a heart of gold though. 


She dropped out of high school at age 14. She got pregnant and shortly married thereafter at age 17, in 1985. Had her son Daniel, who she loved very much. She separated from her spouse, Billy Wayne Smith, after a year of marriage, the divorce being finalized in 1993.


To provide for her son she decided to work in a strip club in Houston. She had an 86 year old client, J Howard Marshall, who was a billionaire oil tycoon. After 2 years of him giving her lavish gifts and asking for marriage multiple times, eventually she married him. Some say she was trying to get the money, but in all interviews she said she loved him. Check out her interview on Larry King in 2002. It was so beautiful.


August 4th, 1995 Marshall died. Anna fought her son-in-law, E. Pierce Marshall, for half the inheritance, 550 million dollars. She was not in the will, and Marshall's family did not like Anna Nicole Smith apparently. The courts never settled this, it went around in appeal after appeal and Ruth Bader Ginsberg and George W Bush both weighed in on the case in favor of Anna Nicole. The latest development was 2014 both Anna Nicole and E. Pierce were dead at this point, and it's the estates fighting the court cases. 


She threw up on Dolly Parton's shoes. In a ladies restroom at an Oscar's after party in 1995. 


At the age of 24, Anna Nicole Smith had a phone call with her estranged father, Donald Hogan. Donald told Anna Nicole he saw her in the playboy magazine.


She had a long relationship with her attorney Howard Stern, and announced pregnancy in 2006. Paternity is contested though. The birth video was available on pay-per-view. 


3 days after the birth of her daughter Dannielynn, her son Daniel crawled into bed with Anna Nicole apparently shaking and sick. When she woke up, she discovered she was holding her dead son. He was 20 years old.


6 months later she died of a drug overdose herself. February 8th, 2007. 


I wonder why I have this obsession with the ruination of amazing women. I get that it has to do with patriarchy and misogyny, but I also want Anna Nicole's pure heart to inspire me. She's a role model in some sense. I also want to honor her in death, instead of keeping her image as a disposable 'dumb-blonde' sexual object. Maybe retelling her tragic life isn't the way to do it. But I freaking love that she unapologetically puked on Dolly Parton's shoes. Go Anna Nicole, that was iconic.

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