Anna Nicole Smith is remembered for her relationships with men: from nude pics for the male gaze to her second marriage to 89-year-old billionaire J. Howard Marshall. Finally, her love for women is spoken about in Netflix’s new documentary: Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me by director Ursula Macfarlane.
Born Vickie Lynn Hogan on November 28, 1967, Smith already had a son and an ex-husband when she made it to the public eye. After working at Jim’s Krispy Fried Chicken in Mexia, Texas, throughout the 80s, she was featured in the centerfold of Playboy’s March 1992 issue. She was made Playmate of the Year in 1993 and went on to model for Guess, H&M and Heatherette.
1994 was a big year for the star. Smith married elderly billionaire J. Howard Marshall, resulting in speculation she did so only for his money – which she denied. In the same year, the New York magazine used a photo of Smith sitting in a short skirt with cowboy boots and eating chips, for the cover of an issue titled ‘White Trash Nation’. She immediately initiated a lawsuit against the magazine, claiming she did not authorize the use of the photo and that the article damaged her reputation. The lawsuit was reportedly settled.
Anna Nicole Smith starred in a few acting roles, usually as the ‘ditzy, flirty blond’, before she died from an accidental drug overdose in 2007, soon after her son Daniel died of the same thing. Smith was exploited: someone to jerk off to but never take seriously. Someone who must be using her sexuality to pull the wool over men’s eyes, to take advantage of them, to tempt them into doing bad things, even if what made her ‘hot’ was all socially constructed by patriarchy in the first place. Living in poverty, she leaned into misogyny to make money. But she was seen as the problem, not misogyny itself.
Anna Nicole Smith deserved a love story and you could say she had one with Melissa “Missy” Byrum, who’s one of the primary narrators in the documentary. Smith’s long-rumoured bisexuality is often swept under the rug to make way for the much-preferred narrative she lived to please men… until now.
“Everyone fell in love with [her],” Byrum says in an interview with People. “I did too.”
The pair began secretly dating in 1992, after meeting in a Houston strip club. Smith’s stage name was ‘Nicki’, and Byrum said Nicki wasn’t like the other dancers. “All of us girls were abused in some way and we shared about it,” Byrum says. “She [Smith] didn’t have any of that in her past.”
Smith started sharing Byrum’s stories of abuse to garner support and attention. “Nicki adapted to get what she needed,” Byrum says. “She started to manifest the character of Anna Nicole” years before Guess designer Paul Marciano gave her the name. “She learned from stripping that guys like to believe you’re stupid if you’re that pretty. She always said, ‘It takes a smart person to be really dumb.'”
You could say Smith had married twice before the old billionaire. Byrum says that Smith proposed to her in 1993, the same year she did the Playboy centerfold. “She gave me a set of rings and we got married in the backyard by the pool with champagne,” Byrum says. “She wanted me to have a baby with her. But I always knew it wasn’t ever going to work out because she was never, ever going to settle down with one person.”
It might look like Smith called the relationship off when she made some fame, but Byrum said it was her who walked away after Smith’s addiction became too much to handle: “She needed more love than any one human being could give her.”
