Small treasures could not sustain Annalise
Sex may sell — but it doesn’t pay much. So suggests the last will and testament of Sydney model Annalise Braakensiek, who died in January at the age of 46.
Sex may sell — but it doesn’t pay much.
So suggests the last will and testament of Sydney model Annalise Braakensiek, who died in January at the age of 46.
At the end of a successful modelling career — if fame and publicity can be considered measurements of such — Braakensiek left a modest estate, the prizes of which were a $600,000 Sydney apartment and a small handful of personal possessions the model felt compelled to itemise in her will.
These included a china set that once belonged to her grandmother (and that she left to her mother, perhaps at the exclusion of anything else) and a crystal so treasured the model nominated not one but a series of friends she hoped would value it on her death.
Braakensiek, the sunniest and sweetest of souls, left little material wealth behind when she died.
Little to show for three decades of hard slog and unrelenting public scrutiny, of building a network of creative friends and associates who helped construct and manage her many reinventions and self-funded projects — calendars, lingerie ranges, healthy lifestyle retreats and the like.
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There was no vast business empire needing to be managed or sold. No tropical Byron Bay retreat or gem collection gifted to her by wealthy suitors through the decades that needed distributing or selling. No children whose futures needed securing.
Just an apartment, a china set, a crystal and some unspecified personal effects.
The timing of Braakensiek’s will, written in May in the weeks following her split from her husband, will do little to console those still grieving her death.
While many friends and family have clung to the idea Braakensiek died as a result of an accidental drug overdose over the New Year period, her new will supports the theory, held by others, that the RUOK? ambassador and PETA supporter, who was no stranger to depression, took her own life.
Unearthed by The Sunday Telegraph reporter Brenden Hills and sighted by this columnist, the document comes to light in a week in which the media spotlight fell harshly on at least one Sydney model agent, who admitted packing up one starry-eyed Australian teenage model in the 1990s and sending her off to Paris to live with an associate of paedophile American financier Jeffrey Epstein.
One only has to scratch the surface of the modelling industry to find ugly stories of exploitation, drug abuse and sex-trading. Its very existence depends on it being able to attract the most naive and fragile of young people, those prone to flattery and who possess little concept of future wealth planning beyond the vague dream of perhaps one day landing a sugar daddy — like that rare unicorn Miranda Kerr has. Kerr is married to, and expecting a second child with, US tech billionaire Evan Spiegel.
But a pretty girl has to meet a lot of vile lascivious types before she meets an Evan Spiegel, and they are given few tools to help them navigate such a world — and fewer still to navigate a sugar-daddyless life post-modelling.
In such a notoriously uninhibited and unchecked place, women like Braakensiek and Sydney television identity and
ex-model Charlotte Dawson (who took her own life in 2014, aged 47), struggle when their most bankable assets — beauty and youth — have faded.
A beautiful face or perfect bottom no longer have, at the age of 46 or 47, any monetary value in a market obsessed with what is fresh and new.
Yet for all the vegan meals she fed it, all the positive energy, the white light, the sweat, tears and abstinence that went into preserving her still-enviable bikini body until her death, it is not Braakensiek’s body her friends and family are now missing but her gentle spirit, as evidenced by the tributes still being paid to her just eight months after her death.
Annette.sharp@news.com.au
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Originally published as Small treasures could not sustain Annalise
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