Because I'm relatively young compared to so many Amherst students and faculty, I feel, perhaps more than anyone on campus, that she has been a consistent character in my personal pop culture pantheon. From when I first laid eyes on her at six years old while watching "Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult," to hearing of her crazy antics after crashing a bar mitzvah on "Entertainment Tonight" when I was nine, to catching her "E! True Hollywood Story" in my middle school years, Smith has always fascinated me. I saw a spark in her that others just didn't, and I have come to her defense many times over the years, sticking to my opinion that she may have, indeed, loved her deceased oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall (a man over 60 years her senior) for more than his riches and that her appearance as a white-trash babbling moron was merely a façade.
So when I learned of her untimely and mysterious death on Feb. 8, I was both shocked and saddened. I may not have known Smith, but I was aware of the goings-on of her life and sympathized for her origins.
Born Vickie Lynn Hogan in 1967, she was raised poor and fatherless in a small town in Eastern Texas by her mom and her maternal aunt. Growing up, she idolized Marilyn Monroe and made it clear she wanted to follow in the famous sex symbol's footsteps. She dropped out of high school after failing freshman year and at 17, married the 16-year-old short-order cook of the fried chicken restaurant where she had been a waitress. After giving birth to the couple's child, Daniel, in 1986 and soon after separating from her husband, Smith resorted to stripping at a Houston nightclub when other employment failed to pan out.
Others may see her as a backwoods trailer whore because of this, but I feel for her struggles and admire the fortitude she had when she sent in photos of herself to the Playboy model search contest in 1993, a move that showed her determination to live out her dream of being the next Monroe.
The day of her death, my shock and sadness turned to disgust. I observed a disconcerting collective reaction around campus-that Smith's death was funny because she was stupid. Akin to the period following Steve Irwin's similarly unexpected demise, a bevy of Facebook groups mocking Smith's death appeared seemingly out of nowhere in a matter of hours after the news had broken-everything from "There's Nothing Funny About Death ... Unless It Involves Anna Nicole Smith," to "Good News for Anna Nicole Smith: She's Dead." I felt sickened by my fellow students, from Amherst or anywhere. I understand that Smith was not always the easiest person to take seriously, and I admit to having made fun of her antics from time to time, but targeting her was like shooting fish in a barrel-banal and none too clever.
The worst, for me, came when I was sitting at dinner that night and a friend announced Smith's death to the table. Someone immediately erupted, "Thank God!" with their hands flailing in raucous glee, as though glorious victory for the intelligentsia had been won at Smith's death. As a friend jokingly stated to me months ago, watching Anna caused her to lose brain cells. Thinking about it more seriously, though, was she really such an enemy of the intellectual zeitgeist here? Did her "stupidity" actually pose a threat to our supposed prodigious acumen? Or is this disturbing merriment just simply elitist schadenfreude?
She represented a life, no matter how ridiculous she or her behavior seemed. She was someone who faced enormous stress in tragedy in the last months of her life-the death of her son and a number of legal issues-not to mention a variety of health issues including pneumonia, the flu, a possible heart condition and purported prescription drug (ab)use. She was a person, not some invincible cartoon character. It's a wonder how she survived this long.
Smith was, without question, strikingly beautiful, magnificently buxom and certainly not as dumb as her act demonstrated her to be. According to gossip columnist Liz Braun, "She wasn't stupid. Asked once how she'd gained so much weight, Smith said, 'I was just eating everything that wasn't trying to eat me.'"
She made strides in the '90s for full-figured women and took advantage of opportunities that came her way. She was able to take hold of her life and make something of herself, able to orchestrate her own fame and fortune while coming from virtually nothing. I don't knock her because of her lack of education or "stupidity"-I regard her for achieving her dream.
May you rest in peace, Anna. Your death paralleled your idol, but as www.salon.com's Cintra Wilson put it, you were more like a bonfire in a hailstorm than a candle in the wind. As for you, Amherst, you should be ashamed of yourself.