Anna Nicole Smith (born Vickie Lynn Hogan in November 28, 1967) is undoubtedly an iconic cultural figure who enchanted America. In 1992, she first appeared in Playboy Magazine — and made a name for herself as a modern-day Monroe, becoming a model-slash-tv star-slash-sex symbol.
In the article “How Anna Nicole Smith Became America’s Punchline,” a Buzzfeed writer reported, “From 1992, when she made her first appearance in Playboy, to her death Feb. 8, 2007, Anna Nicole Smith occupied the story of the beautiful girl lifted up from the dust, and then the story of the beautiful woman destroyed, and sometimes both.”
Anna Nicole Smith’s complicated and tragic story has been one the public has mythologized, analyzed, and obsessed over for a while. One of the things Smith was known for? She married an 89-year-old, a Texas-based oil mogul named J. Howard Marshall. She was 26, and of course, this made all sorts of headlines. But, she also battled addiction and lost one of her children.
“Even when her humanity — and her weakness — was visible for all to see, and the hard realities around which she had constructed this fantasy version of herself became extraordinarily painful, we remained determined to see her as unstoppably seductive, manipulative, glamorous, and unforgivably larger than life,” Buzzfeed noted in the same article.
So, we’re still here, fascinated by Anna Nicole Smith’s story — and today we’re digging into her eating and dietary habits. What kind of food blog would we be if we didn’t?
Although we don’t condone people judging a person’s weight, Anna Nicole Smith’s size was always under inspection.
She loved food, came from a food-loving state, and definitely felt the pressure of the 1990s’ thin craze.
She went on and endorsed dietary supplements as a way of losing weight, which was a battle for her, according to Yahoo.
In 1992, she emerged onto the scene as a sex symbol beloved by America. She later gained weight due to the death of her second husband and people weren’t so nice.
“I’ve been really stressed out lately and depressed and I can’t quit eating. I feel like a pig,” Smith wrote in an entry dated Aug. 16, 1992.
According to the Irish Examiner, Anna Nicole admitted she took painkillers after her husband’s death and went into a coma.”
“I almost died. I had to learn how to walk again and all this and that. It was hard and if you have to go into rehab, it is not fun,” she said.
Smith said she felt torn down and was told she was nothing during treatment.
“They say you’re crap. They say stuff like: ‘You’re no better than anybody else.’ It’s just horrible,” she explained.
People shouldn’t have become obsessed with her weight, but they were.
After all, it was the 1990s — a time that wasn’t exactly body-positive. From there, her weight went up and down.
In Smith’s diaries, we see that she turned to food as a comfort tool.
Even though we don’t think her diaries should have made public (or her privacy violated), we now know that she binge-ate when she was feeling emotionally overwhelmed.
By 2004, it was revealed that Anna had started using TrimSpa to lose that weight.
Anna Nicole Smith stepped out at Fashion Week in New York with a slimmer frame, and told everyone that she’d been using TrimaSpa — to lose about 69 pounds!
TrimSpa was a dietary supplement designed to support weight loss. It contained ephedra, which was supposed to decrease the appetite. People doubted its claims.
TrimSpa came onto the scene around 2001.
According to CNN Money, Smith was largely responsible for many millions of their sales — which dwindled over time, especially after her passing.
Ephedra was later banned in 2008.
It was said that at one point, Smith took six TrimSpa pills per day — the max dosage for a single person.
Sadly, she also took laxatives and dieted very heavily. These behaviors weren’t healthy for her, and they certainly aren’t healthy for anyone else either.
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Smith discussed her dietary strategies.
In the interview, she said, “You eat, like, small portions and you do it for, like, two weeks, and also they have a colon cleanser and you’re just, like, on the pot all the time… You lose that weight quickly.”
She also told the Early Show in an interview that her appetite has nearly gone away due to the supplements.
Anna Nicole Smith told The Early Show co-anchor Rene Syler, “It’s really hard to eat, because, for me, it’s like I’ve lost my appetite. So I have to really, really push myself to eat.”
It seemed that the impetus behind her weight loss was to stop people from commenting on her body — which seriously sucks.
She told The Early Show, “I wasn’t unhappy at all until just everybody just started ridiculing me so bad. I just got to the point that it was just like, ‘My God, you know. Just shut up, everybody. What is the big deal?’ And then I just looked in the mirror. I’m like, ‘I am fat!'”
Let’s just take a moment to remember that shaming people for their size is unacceptable.
These days, we’re glad to see more body diversity in campaigns and throughout the media — and we hope it continues.
We wish that she didn’t feel the need to change herself because of the public’s commentary.
Smith’s words are painful to hear but they’re a reminder that body-shaming is detrimental and unfair.
She even won a “Big Makeover” award in 2004. (Which is a gross concept for an award).
It’s pretty gross that people gave praise to others for losing weight — as if being a certain body size is the only way someone can actually be valuable. We wonder what Smith would think of the body positive movement today.
Back in the 90s and early 2000s, people were extra “thin crazy.”
According to a Salon piece, Susan Orlean, an author and journalist (who worked with The New Yorker) wrote, “The ’90s were more thin-crazy than the present time.” In fact, people were HUGE on fast-fix diets and dangerous ways of slimming down.
In fact, the 90s were all about weird diets.
Like the blood type diet, which gave you eating recommendations based off of your blood type. There were also liquid diets and dangerous diet suppressant pills. It’s no wonder Anna got roped into these dietary moves!
But beyond her using TrimSpa, Anna was something of a foodie.
According to the Dallas Observer, she loved food (who doesn’t?). In fact, reports said — and we can’t verify this at all — that she spent about $4,000 per month on food. We’re thinking this is a probably tabloid exaggeration.
She craved foods that “Elvis would have liked” — aka the unhealthy stuff.
The Dallas Observer said that her favorite foods were those Elvis would have loved: Mashed potatoes and gravy, pizza (not the crust), fried bologna and cheese, biscuits, burgers, and pickles.
We can’t say that we don’t love all of these ourselves!
(By the way, Elvis was big on comfort foods, too — which is where the comparison comes from).
In fact, it’s well-known that Elvis’ favorite sandwich was made from white bread, peanut butter, bananas and crap-tons of butter. Yes, you read that correctly.
Like, you know, massive bacon sandwiches.
Yep. He also downed sandwiches made with an entire freaking POUND of bacon. Hey, anything for rock n’ roll royalty, right?
But anyway — back to Anna’s love for food. One of her chefs (and former lover Alexander Denk) told The Daily Mail that she loved hearty foods.
He said, “She is a Texas girl and she looked like she’d enjoy hearty, home-cooked meals. I cooked apple strudel, Austrian food.”
Sounds pretty delicious, right?
And she also loved herself some Godiva chocolates.
Fried chicken and chocolate? Yes, please. In fact, it was said that she demanded these chocolates during her shoots with Guess.
But Denk also said that he taught her how to eat nutritiously, too.
“As her chef, I taught her how to make nutritional food and as her trainer, we worked out together,” he told The Daily Mail.
But before the fame — Smith actually used to work as a chicken slinger at Krispy Fried Chicken.
Yep, this was way back before she got famous. She worked as a chicken slinger in Mexia, Texas, according to Reelz. Her job? Serve up scrumptious fried chicken.
What led to the job?
Smith actually dropped out of high school at the age of 15. Her next move was to work at the fast-food restaurant to earn a living.
It was at the restaurant that she met her first husband, Billy Wayne Smith who was the cook there.
But it was later in life at another chain restaurant that her life really began to change. She was working at Red Lobster when Guess founder Paul Marciano discovered her.
She was in San Antonia, waitressing at the establishment when Paul Marciano popped in. He came up to her and said, “Who are you?” She told him she’d never taken pictures or modeled before, according to People Magazine.
So he whisked her out of Texas, took her to New York, and had her signed to an agency.
In her diary, obtained by People, she describes buying $3,000 worth of clothing at Neiman Marcus and admits to starving herself.
So, yes, big things sure do happen at Red Lobster! It’s almost unimaginable to think of how far Smith came — and where she went in life.
Her ex-lover Larry Birkhead said her rise to fame was pretty wild.
Larry Birkhead, her ex-boyfriend and the father of her daughter, Dannielynn Birkhead, said, “Here she is, a little girl from Texas, went from working in a chicken shack to making movies with big stars in Hollywood.”
After working at Red Lobster and a chicken shack, it’s no surprise that Smith loved food. Did you know she also took part in eating contests?
[fm_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfO7V0fcsGA"]When her reality TV show — The Anna Nicole Smith Show — hit the airwaves, she chowed down on pizzas and pasta in an Italian restaurant.
The Anna Nicole Smith show was on air for three seasons.
According to Ranker, audiences couldn’t get enough of the star after watching her E! True Hollywood Story in 1997, which is the cable network’s highest-rated shows ever.
It debuted in 2002 on E! and starred Anna Nicole Smith, along with a band of characters.
It was a reality TV show that many described as contrived (as is most of reality TV).
The show focused on her life after the height of her fame.
It showcased issues around her health, former modeling career, and financial struggles. It was quirky and funny, but it also highlighted Anna’s darker days.
In fact, many people thought that the TV network took advantage of Smith during the filming.
In order to kick up TV ratings, many people thought E! purposefully portrayed her in a negative light. And while we wish this wasn’t the case, reality TV — as we now know — isn’t entirely real.
Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly said, “The thing is, it’s no joke. In [presenting] a barely coherent Anna Nicole Smith, E! is doing something that comes pretty close to being [highly objectionable].”
Tucker, in his review of the premiere episode, also called the series “a human train wreck.”
While the majority of writers dubbed the series exploitative, Rolling Stone credits it for redefining television.
“Smith’s true legacy lies in the fact that she was one of the first reality television powerhouses. Through her reality sitcom The Anna Nicole Smith Show, which featured her going to the dentist and participating in eating contests, she turned D-list celebrity status into A-list television,” the outlet stated.
It seems like her experience on reality TV made her mental health suffer.
In 2004, she introduced Kanye West at the American Music Awards in a questionable state.
Through slurred words, she started by asking, “Do you like my body?” while touching her chest.
Smith’s ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead, told Wendy Williams, “Anna had a lot of health issues due to her breast enhancement surgery… she had back pain a lot, she had chronic pain, she had seizures. The night before [the AMAs] she [had] two seizures, and I tried to get her not to do that show – begged her – but she said no.”
Los Angeles clinical psychologist, Trevor Small, talked about how stars struggle in the spotlight in an interview with E! with the following explanation:
“These people often have serious challenges going into these shows, which is why they were probably cast in the first place, and sometimes having their problems shared so publicly doesn’t help matters. It is interesting for us to watch their struggle.”
It could also explained why she started making some poor decisions.
She was drinking heavily in the days before her death.
According to the Seattle Times, workers at the hotel and casino in which she died have said she was on a “booze-fueled frenzy.”
The outlet reported, “A bartender named Mike said Smith was tossing back double shots. “It looked like she was really, really drunk. She was slurring her speech. She looked plastered.”
The reports are gravely concerning, and make us wish someone had spoke up.
Sadly, Anna Nicole Smith died on February 8 2007 at 2:49 p.m.
According to Today, she very sadly died of an accidental overdose. She had plenty of different drugs in her system.
She died at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida. Her funeral occurred in March.
Her death was deemed an accidental overdose.
Her death was said to be caused by an accidental overdose on at least nine prescription drugs. She’d taken sleep syrup with other drugs in her system. It was also clear that she lacked proper health care.
She was also super sick at the time but didn’t go to the hospital.
She also had a very high fever and an infection from multiple Human Growth Hormone injections (used for weight loss) in her buttocks, according to People. The fact is, she needed to have gone to the hospital.
Weirdly enough, some of the drugs in her system were also found in Marilyn Monroe’s system decades before.
Anna Nicole Smith was always compared to Monroe, so it’s ironic that a sedative known as chloral hydrate was found in both their system at the time of their deaths.
In the year before her death, she’d both had a baby and lost her son.
On June 1, 2006, she gave birth to a baby girl. Just a few months later, Smith’s 20-year-old son, Daniel Wayne Smith, died on September 10 — also of an accidental overdose.
He actually died while he was at his mother’s hospital room visiting her after she gave birth.
He’d died due to both antidepressant and painkiller use.
Smith was absolutely devastated, of course. To make things even more complicated, she’d had a brand new baby on her hands.
Anna Nicole Smith’s brief life was marked by both glamour and tragedy. She was a sex symbol and a cultural icon.
In the end, we look back at the young girl who was discovered at a Red Lobster, who loved comfort foods and who made wild and weird decisions while under the watchful eye of the American public.
Today, her daughter Dannielynn is in 7th grade.
We think Anna would be super proud of her daughter.
Oh, and Dannielyn also models, just like her mom!
When Dannielynn was six, she did her own kids Guess campaign — in the footsteps of her mother. According to E! News, “Dannielynn has always looked up to her mom’s image and…I think that this is kind of Dannielynn’s way of paying tribute to her mom in her own special way.”
“Larry constantly talks about Dannielynn’s mom,” a source told HollywoodLife.
“When Anna passed, Larry vowed to everyone that he would do that and he’s succeeded. Larry is really private when it comes to Dannielynn, but he reminds her constantly about her mom and tells her daily how much she looks just like her. She is a spitting image of her mother and Larry loves that,” the same source revealed.
While he keeps a pretty active Instagram account, Birkhead likes his daughter having a quiet life, far from Hollywood.
The reason for the annyal father-daughter trip into the spotlight each year, at Kentucky Derby has a special reason.
It is the same party at which Birkhead met Smith years ago.
During a 20/20 interview in 2017, he said his daughter enjoyed Girl Scouts, Snapchat, eating French fries and taking care of her pet lizard.
In possibly the most heartbreaking story, Birkhead told ET, “She’s clingy to her girlfriends’ moms and she’ll say things like, ‘Do you want to adopt me? Would you be my honorary mother?’ She tends to do that a lot.”
Being a single parent can be insanely hard, but Larry seems to being doing a great job.
To celebrate his daughter heading into eighth grade, he surprised her with tickets to Hamilton.
Unfortunately for fans, he revealed his daughter doesn’t seem to want to follow her mom’s on-screen ambitions or modeling career.
“She doesn’t show any interest in it. She wants to be a kid,” he told 20/20.
We respect that so much.
