Joan Smith: Rest in peace, Anna. Life was tough on you

Aspiring to follow in the footsteps of Marilyn Monroe, the most famous dead blonde in the world, has always seemed to me a dangerous ambition. The Texan model Anna Nicole Smith outlived her idol by three years, which isn't much consolation for dying suddenly at the age of 39. At the time of Smith's death, she was staying in a hotel in Florida owned by the Native American Seminole tribe. The manager said it was a place where people go to relax, and it's easy to see why Smith might have felt in need of a rest.

She was embroiled in lawsuits over the estate of her late husband, an elderly oil tycoon, and the paternity of her baby daughter, who had barely arrived in this world last autumn when Smith's adult son collapsed and died in his mother's hospital room. Smith's own death had just been announced when her ex-boyfriend filed an emergency injunction seeking custody of her daughter.

Smith's detractors paint her as a gold-digger who conned a dying man into marriage, a role Monroe might have been offered. But there are closer parallels and Smith's story reminds me of Jade Goody, whose career began in the world of "reality" TV where Smith ended up after years of bruising court hearings.

Goody's interview in a "celebrity" magazine seems to have been predicated on the notion that she was a suspected war criminal at the very least. To the Hague with Jade! - and with Anna Nicole, whose crimes against humanity include a rather technical legal victory in the Supreme Court two years ago. Working-class girls aren't supposed to do things like that, but I much prefer Smith's single-minded pursuit of what she felt was her rightful inheritance to Goody's abject surrender to the bullies of the age.

Neither woman began life with much. Smith was brought up by her mother after her father abandoned the family. Goody used her notoriety as a not-very-bright contestant on an early series of Big Brother to make a career as a minor celebrity, while Smith worked in a strip club and caught the eye of the fabulously wealthy J Howard Marshall II. I've never understood why it's fine for elderly men to lust after young women as Peter O'Toole does in Hanif Kureishi's lamentable new movie, Venus, but reprehensible if the woman expects a share of his worldly goods in return. Smith asked for half when her husband died, and her stepson's refusal to split a $1.6bn (£820m) estate with her speaks volumes about class and cupidity.

As the case dragged on, Smith carried on working and overcame repeated setbacks. Her choices wouldn't have been mine but then I'm an educated woman, and I know that the warped values which seduce women such as Smith and Goody will also destroy them in time. No one told Smith as she posed for Playboy that looking like Monroe would get her a reputation as trailer trash; no one told Goody, as she paraded her lack of education and manners on TV that what amused viewers would lead to her being crucified later.

Goody is still alive, and I hope she'll come to realise that there are worse crimes in the world than being rude and crude on TV. Anna Nicole didn't even get to 40. I'm taking this opportunity to pay tribute, as one working-class girl called Smith, to another who wasn't so lucky.