1. ANNA, BENAZIR, AND ME I cannot put my finger on it now, Pop! Cassidy, my fellow bartender, ducked as I plucked another champagne cork. We frantically prepared the bubbly as our New Year’s Eve crowd trickled in the door. With only ten minutes to spare until 2008, we filled champagne glasses with the speed of lightning. Todd, our trusty disc jockey, approached the bar to ask if we were ready. “Sure,” I said…”are you?” “You know it!” he said. “I’m even more ready for the New Year!” I asked the twenty-seven year old if he referred to his re-enlistment into the U.S. Army. “A new marriage… I’ve got a new baby… I’m gonna have a new career…health insurance for my family… it’s gonna be a new life!” How true, I thought. The turbulence of 2007 brought several beginnings and endings into my life. For the first time I felt genuine exuberance of the New Year, rather than pseudo-resolutions that littered the holiday. Only one year ago, I rang in the New Year with an empty bank account, a growing depression, and a failing marriage fraught with emotional abuse. Now I faced the world with a financial reserve of two months of living expenses, a happier outlook, a return to my authentic self, and a budding romance with an old friend- a true gentleman whose kindness and gentility renewed my faith in love. What a difference a year made! “Ten..nine..,” boomed Todd’s voice over the sound system. “Eight…seven… six… five… four… three… two… one. Happy New Year!” Cassidy and I hugged. While ‘Auld Lang Syne‘ still played, I grabbed my cell phone and ran into the club’s liquor room, where I called Eric. “Hi baby,” I said..”I stole a few moments to call you.” He sounded surprised…”That’s so sweet of you, honey.” Choking back tears, I explained that I wanted to let him know how important he was to me in the past year, and said, “I’m looking forward to spending the next year with you even more.” He sounded moved. “I can’t wait to see you after work!” he said. 2007 brought as many changes to my life as it did headlines to my television. Born during the Vietnam War, I grew up keenly aware of the world around me. The year’s headlines saw the loss of two famous women whose lives eerily touched my own, albeit for drastically reasons: Vickie Lynn Marshall, a/k/a Anna Nicole Smith and former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Despite being worlds apart from each other, these famous women met on the spiritual level of this lady lawyer in the American mid west. The little girl in me… the awkward teen that relished eye shadow and devoured CNN… always harbored a perfectionist desire to have Anna Nicole’s looks and Bhutto‘s leadership skills. At seventeen, I was ill-prepared for the cultural barriers to integration of female brains and physical appeal, and woefully ignorant of dangers that lined the “beauty” and “brains” boxes of the Madonna/whore paradigm -- dangers that Anna & Benazir know all too well. Twenty years later I knew I possessed both attributes, but something was wrong. Anna and Benazir represented the duality of my nature, but the delicate balance between them had tilted dangerously in one direction. The former represented the woman I was becoming; the other represented the woman I was losing. Despite divergent educational levels, numerous similarities existed between the former Playboy playmate and the Pakistani leader- at least, to the observant eye. To be sure, life wasn’t a bowl of cherries for either woman- especially when it came to personal relationships. Their marriages drew accusations of financial shadiness that spawned public ridicule - Anna’s marriage to millionaire J. Howard Marshall earned her a “golddigger“ title, while Benazir‘s husband Asif Ali Zardari spent years in prison on corruption charges that brought down her second administration.
They died amidst blame games and controversy, simultaneously adored and despised by their nations. The women were blamed for their own downfall: Anna’s drug abuse spawned indifference towards her death, while Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf snubbed Benazir: “For standing up outside the car, I think it was she to blame alone- nobody else. Responsibility is hers.“1 Not quite a year before Cassidy and I served up the bubbly at a Cleveland night club, I lay on the living room floor of the apartment I shared with my husband Jack. As he busied himself at our computer, national news reported that former Playboy playmate and Trimspa spokes model Anna Nicole Smith died suddenly at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel in Florida. The coroner’s report later confirmed that a lethal drug cocktail, coupled with infection from injections of B-12 and human growth hormone, brought down the model. Documents from the medical examiner indicated that eight of the eleven drugs in her system were prescribed to Howard K. Stern,2 her lawyer, manager, pseudo-husband, and enabler of her long-standing drug addiction. A shadowy figure, Stern appeared in numerous interviews with Smith and abandoned his law practice in order to manage (i.e., make money from) her career. Although perceived by some to be Anna’s puppy dog, unflattering posthumous details revealed his role in her poor emotional health. On October 20, 2007, Geraldo Rivera aired a disturbing video shot by Stern; it featured an incoherent Anna, stumbling around a pool in clown make-up, and passing off her bulging pregnant belly as mere “gas.” Anna’s behavior frightened the nine-year-old daughter of family friend Ford Shelly. Sadly, the girl is heard on the video begging Stern to call a doctor: “Howard, help!.. Cut the tape off and help her…I think we need the hospital.” Stern, on the other hand, coos, “This is worth millions...this footage is worth money.” 3 Despite Stern’s weak allegation that Shelly “stole” the tape from his own family’s house, he released the video to Fox News at no charge. Staring at the ceiling, I pondered the parallels between my life and that of the model whose idolization of Marilyn Monroe eerily loomed over her death. The bombshell born Vickie Lynn Hogan and I were products of working class families. Our resumes were richly diverse. From food service to exotic dancing, we were determined to meet our respective goals- she wanted to raise her son, while I wanted to pass the bar exam. I wasn’t a high school dropout like Anna, but our compulsive behaviors surrounding food and weight were strikingly similar: I shed fifty-five pounds from my 5‘4“ frame in 1999, while the buxom blonde reportedly lost sixty-nine pounds with the help of TrimSpa4 and subsequently became its spokes model in a deal brokered by Howard K. Stern. We held strong political opinions that were overshadowed by sexualized images that took center stage: Anna’s activism surrounding animal abuse and gay rights barely merited a footnote in her obituary, while my beliefs on law and government were squeezed into a paltry corner of the on-line universe called “Kitten‘s Korner.” More importantly, my life had taken recent turns with equally fatal ramifications. Three months prior to Anna Nicole’s death, I reconciled with an emotionally abusive husband whose professional priority was to make money from my image, law degree, and any other talents he could exploit. During our marriage his only stint in gainful employment was cut short when the director of his radio station terminated his tenure as an advertising rep- with unemployment benefits. According to him, this generosity was accompanied by her encouragement to spend the following year building up our motorcycle cheesecake website, V-TwinGirls.com. His boss’ decision provided the ideal opportunity for Jack to cast me into the one-dimensional image of “Kitten” with ever-increasing intensity. Each unwholesome suggestion dripped onto my consciousness like water onto rock, slowly molding it. I convinced myself that my marital obligations included supporting this business that was “ours.” Soon my focus included less law and social justice and more diuretics, fat burning pills, and restylane injections. Jack’s efforts to alter my body were accompanied by efforts to alter my mood, including his encouragement for me to drink alcohol - a “lose-lose” proposition that included harsh criticism in the event I overindulged. I explored the possibility of the infamous B-12 shots that gave Anna her final infection. Although he never dared use the term “meal ticket” to describe me, I was repeatedly reminded that the fate of the V-TwinGirls rested on my ability to fulfill the sexy image of “Kitten” and manage financial matters. What began as a positive outlet to express my vivaciousness and balance my intellect became a futile exercise that endangered my physical and financial health. I was also living on borrowed time, for alcohol’s high calories threatened his ideal of a thin Kitten. Anna’s valium, ativan, and chloral hydrate were closer than I cared to admit. My eyes traced the pattern in our ceiling as I listened to the grainy 9-1-1 tape: “We need assistance to Room 607 at the Hard Rock. It’s in reference to a white female. She’s not breathing and not responsive. Actually, it’s Anna Nicole Smith.”5 The blazing fireplace didn’t quell my chill as I recalled a fall conversation with Jack. Driving home from a dance practice for the V-Twin Girls, his tirade about my rhythm skills turned into a morbid inspirational speech. “We (i.e., the business) need to get at least five more years out of you. You say you wanna go out on a high note while you‘re young? That’s just a bullshit excuse. Look at Anna Nicole. She’s what, thirty-eight, and SHE did it! So can you.” The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I wanted more than five years….and I wanted more than my sedative-ridden corpse being wheeled out of a hospital beneath maroon velvet. One week following Anna’s death, I left the household. Thousands of miles from the Texas town where Anna Nicole grew up, Benazir Bhutto was born into a prominent Shia Muslim family, the Pakistani equivalent to the American Kennedy dynasty. She began her college education in the United States, where she attended Radcliffe at Harvard University. Just as I fondly remember my philosophical explorations at Ohio University, she viewed her undergraduate education with nostalgia, calling it “four of the happiest years of my life” and saying that it “formed the very basis of [her] belief in democracy.” We graduated cum laude in our respective classes, and continued our education at postgraduate levels- she at Oxford, and I at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. We indulged our interest with the art of debate, for the exchange advanced public awareness on the key issues of our day. Benazir and I were on a mission- helping others…speaking for those with no voice. Although gender equality was important to us, sometimes we changed tactics: I learned that groups like the National Organization for Women didn’t provide a vehicle for my larger vision, while Benazir realized that Muslim extremism prevented her from instituting feminist reforms as quickly as she desired. Despite altering our methods, we remained opposed to the abuse of power-especially when it led to the injury of our loved ones. At seventeen, my awareness of child abuse was raised when my mother revealed troubling details of her childhood, thereby rendering me a life-long advocate for women and healthy families. Bhutto’s activism was similarly accelerated when, scarcely two years out of college, her father was executed at the hands of Pakistan’s military regime. After enduring an exile in the United Kingdom, she assumed her mother’s position as leader of the Pakistani People’s Party (PPP). Following the death of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, her star rose during Pakistan’s first open election in more than a decade. In November 1988, as I watched George Bush Sr. defeat Michael Dukakis for the American presidency, I also saw Bhutto become the first woman to head the government of a Muslim nation. Indeed, Benazir and I found our political voice during the elections of 1988. Granted, our voice became less audible at various time periods, but it was never silenced. Law school, jobs, compulsive overeating, personal relationships, and a dysfunctional marriage occupied my attention over the years, while Bhutto was sidelined with a series of political pitfalls, losses, tragedies and exiles. In October 2007, after eight years in exile in Dubai and London, she risked everything to return to her original mission in her homeland. Although she survived a suicide bomb attack on her welcome caravan October 18, 2007, her luck ran out after a December campaign rally.
As I walked through my front door after returning from a holiday celebration with my parents, the gruesome footage greeted my eyes as CNN reported Bhutto’s assassination. “No!” I exclaimed as my duffel bag hit the floor with a resounding thud. There was no way the political icon of my youth suffered the same fate as Anna Nicole Smith. For some reason I expected that Benazir would live as long as the idealism she symbolized. Out of sight, out of mind…her exile from the political scene and my exile from self-awareness let me take both of us for granted. If Anna represented the woman in me that I was slowly becoming, and Benazir represented the woman I was losing, the message was clear. Regardless of my placement on the Anna-Benazir scale, I couldn’t ignore either aspect of myself or exploit it on someone else’s terms. Each end of the spectrum presented unique risks, especially in a culture saturated in the dual standards of the Madonna-whore complex. However, my three-year marriage witnessed repeated reminders that I faced larger risks while stationed in the spectrum’s center. Like hermaphrodites, I possessed oppositional characteristics that rendered me a cultural oddity and the subject of exploitation- most notably, by the person closest to me. It was inevitable that I would eventually meet the ultimate fate of Anna and Benazir, but my legacy was hard to envision. Would I be remembered for walking a path of someone else’s choosing and conforming to a pre-packaged box, or would I walk my own path of internal integration? My prim, intellectual “Madonna” side and adventurous appeal deserved equal respect. That respect had to begin with me. “I haven’t given myself away. I belong to myself and always shall.” 1 “Musharraf: Bhutto To Blame For Her Assassination,” CNN.com, January 6, 2008
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