I feel bad for Anna Nicole
I heard the news on my way back to SF from San Jose yesterday, after a presentation of all the work I've been doing this last week to the client . I kept them from making a $20M mistake. So that was good. But, thus, no blogging.
I was surprised at how sad I was for someone I didn't know personally. Perhaps I'd seen enough of the Anna Nicole show to feel I knew her. If you know the name of some one's dog, you may feel you know that person. The show humanized her. We saw her un made up, un glamorous, un censored, un scripted. She wasn't always clever, but she was unapologetically herself.
She was everything our media culture celebrates with its attention. Glamour and sleaze. Affluence and classlessness. Paris Hilton. Britney Spears. Commanding an adoring global audience, lacking anything worthwhile to say.
Her life was tragic. I think she's iconic for what happens to many pretty, but not so quick women: In and out of bad and odd relationships with bad and odd men. And, though she may not have been able to articulate it, I think there was some ironic tension in that she was widely known, and widely wanted, and widely given attention, but she didn't receive a lot of real love. People loved her outsides, but she was pilloried for her insides. Was she a calculating gold digger? A dumb stripper? An unfit mother?
Her weight and appearance: Trampled and scrutinized in the media.
Her rich husband who adored her: Dead.
Her relationship with him: Trampled and scrutinized in a protracted lawsuit.
Her son, a source of love and contentment: Dead.
Her life with her new baby: Trampled and scrutinized in a protracted lawsuit.
Suicide would be understandable. Escaping from it all with a lot of drugs would also be understandable. Not that I endorse these options, but I have a lot of empathy for the spiritual misery of her existence. She may have had fame and money and looks, but she lacked love and peace and connection. And without that, she may have whithered and died from within.
I feel terrible for that poor girl from Texas who just wanted to be loved and happy.
I was surprised at how sad I was for someone I didn't know personally. Perhaps I'd seen enough of the Anna Nicole show to feel I knew her. If you know the name of some one's dog, you may feel you know that person. The show humanized her. We saw her un made up, un glamorous, un censored, un scripted. She wasn't always clever, but she was unapologetically herself.
She was everything our media culture celebrates with its attention. Glamour and sleaze. Affluence and classlessness. Paris Hilton. Britney Spears. Commanding an adoring global audience, lacking anything worthwhile to say.
Her life was tragic. I think she's iconic for what happens to many pretty, but not so quick women: In and out of bad and odd relationships with bad and odd men. And, though she may not have been able to articulate it, I think there was some ironic tension in that she was widely known, and widely wanted, and widely given attention, but she didn't receive a lot of real love. People loved her outsides, but she was pilloried for her insides. Was she a calculating gold digger? A dumb stripper? An unfit mother?
Her weight and appearance: Trampled and scrutinized in the media.
Her rich husband who adored her: Dead.
Her relationship with him: Trampled and scrutinized in a protracted lawsuit.
Her son, a source of love and contentment: Dead.
Her life with her new baby: Trampled and scrutinized in a protracted lawsuit.
Suicide would be understandable. Escaping from it all with a lot of drugs would also be understandable. Not that I endorse these options, but I have a lot of empathy for the spiritual misery of her existence. She may have had fame and money and looks, but she lacked love and peace and connection. And without that, she may have whithered and died from within.
I feel terrible for that poor girl from Texas who just wanted to be loved and happy.
posted by Kenneth at 2:56 PM
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