In the decades that followed, the actual publication that pledged to highlight only the prettiest girls next door spawned a whole empire synonymous with a certain kind of louche sophistication: clubs all around the world, a Seduttore jet chartered by celebrities like Elvis, the famous grotto, Hef’s silk gown. It had even somehow made bunny ears into a sexy accessory, which is among those very strange things cultural historians in the far distant future will be not able to cogently rationalize in their treatises on the mating rituals of the 20th-century American. Helena Antonaccio, who posed in 1969, had seen a pinup from the mag in her father’s garage when she was 5 and grew up attempting to be a Playmate. When she was told by a modeling agent she was not sexy enough, Antonaccio figured out a way to make cute seem seductive. (For the girl Playboy spread, it involved an ice-cream cone. ) “I loved the interest, ” she says. “I still love attention. Especially from men. ”
There exists a lot of talk of ever-more-microgenerational differences these days, but if you want to get down to the metal tacks of it, the American population can more or less be divided into two organizations: those who snuck their first illicit looks at flesh-for-the-ogling in print, and those of us who the bawdy cornucopia of the internet for such endeavors. (Attention, porn profiteers: bawdycornucopia. com is not yet registered. ) Playmates, in retrospect, seem very innocent. Del Monte says she’d never model today: “They show a lot of. ”
But even before it had to compete with on-demand porn, Playboy had to compete in what was dubbed “The Pubic Wars” with increased explicit magazines like Penthouse and Hustler. In 1972, Playboy published its very first full-frontal nudity, a shot of centerfold Marilyn Cole Lownes. But to Cole Lownes-and other Playmates of that era - the photographs didn’t feel like they were about obtaining men off so much as they were about celebrating women. Cole Lownes’s dad told her the photograph that ran in Playboy was like a Rubens artwork. Using the language of the era, she now describes the whole experience “liberating. ” (At the time, she wrote to her parents that she’d be a rich aged lady, since “every time they change the backdrop I make $300. ”)
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| Miss February 1976 |
Laura Aldridge AGE: 59 POST-PLAYBOY: Stylist, decorator
Many men weren’t interested in what was in my head. I think they just wanted to get laid. I had been a Playmate, and that would be a notch in their belt. My ex-husband [Alan Aldridge, who did graphic design for the Beatles] might be the only person who did not think Playboy was cool. He thought Hugh Hefner exploited women. Whenever my oldest daughter, Lily, was 10, she found a Playboy within her dad’s room, so I told her I was a Playmate. She asked in case she could see it. Thirty minutes later I knocked on the door. She had been watching TV. I said, “What do you think? ” She said, “Oh, it’s excellent. ” Both my daughters are supermodels-Lily is a Victoria’s Secret Angel. They’ve carried out it with confidence and a feeling of entitlement.
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| Miss January 1972 |
Marilyn Cole Lownes AGE: 65 POST-PLAYBOY: Journalist
A friend of mine had gone to London through Portsmouth, where I was working as a clerk. She said, “There is a golf club. All you have to do is smile and you will earn a lot of money. ” For the interview, whatever you had to do was bring a bikini. It was my husband [Victor Lownes, office manager of the London Playboy Club, whom she later married] who noticed me in the lineup to test for Playmate. A big advantage of being a bunny woman was the fact that we had enough money in our purses to get on a plane when we felt like it. We could buy our own drinks at Trader Vic’s and visit any club we wanted to and we did it all with our money, and that gave all of us a sense of power and liberation. We were all promiscuous. And we were all greatly our own people.
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| Miss June 1969 |
Helena Antonaccio AGE: 65 POST-PLAYBOY: Doggie-day-care counselor
After high school, I went to modeling school in New York. They believed I was too virginal, not sexy enough. But I got a job at the Seduttore Club. I knew it was a stepping-stone to get into Playboy. Gosh, I didn’t actually go to bunny-training school. When you go to the Playboy mansion, you get a butler and a house maid and you’re driven around in a limo and somebody does your laundry. It is great. I work out three hours a day. It’s our temple, so why not look after it? My newest book is called Helena, the Ultimate Ageless Pinup. It’s pictures of me in my 50s and 60s. I still don’t see personally as a sexy woman, because it’s all just fantasy and smoke as well as mirrors. You’re in that position forever, and your back is just killing you.
All of the women in these pages-who went on to become journalists, entrepreneurs, real-estate agents, and sexagenarian nude models; who married, divorced, and, in one case, gave birth to some Victoria’s Secret supermodel - say the Playmate title imbued them with a sense of self-confidence that seems more of a precursor to the sexual freedom of third-wave feminists compared to related to the objectification and degradation that their contemporaries saw in the mag. “I think everyone who walked in that door to be a bunny girl or even Playmate knew what they had, ” says Cole Lownes. “They may not wish to admit it, but I think they knew [their power]. ”
Today, regardless of the increasingly raunchy - and specific! - pornography online and the sea of look-alike blondes in Playboy (the girls-next-door-to-the-plastic-surgeon’s-office? ), the classic centerfold shot is in existence and well and living on the smartphone. The nude selfie lets all women who so chooses remove the middlemen of photographer and magazine. She may capture herself from whatever angle and with whatever lighting she prefers, within a photo to be kept for her own eyes as a memento, or to be delivered to someone she wants to see it. She can be both object and objectifier. This wounderful woman has complete control.
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| Miss December 1979 |
Candace Jordan AGE: 60 POST-PLAYBOY: Community columnist
I was the valedictorian of my high school in Dupo, Illinois. I had formed a scholarship to St. Louis University but I was absolutely bored in order to death and swore I had to find a different path. A girlfriend of my own told me they were hiring at the St. Louis Playboy Club. I’m an just child so all these girls were like the sisters I never had. Feminists always say, “I can’t believe you’re objectifying yourself. ” And I might say, “Do you think I was forced at gunpoint to do this centerfold? No, it had been my free choice, and that’s what women’s lib is supposed to be regarding. ” After Playboy, I worked as a model, and I was in Risky Company with Tom Cruise. I played one of the hookers. A lot of us still go to these types of autograph shows. Playboy fans are very, very respectful.
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| Miss November 1975 |
Jeremy Lupo AGE: 64 POST-PLAYBOY: Real-estate agent, entrepreneur
I got a job working in the Great Gorge Playboy Club in Vernon Valley, New Jersey. It was a family location! We served a lot of children. That’s where I was asked to do the centerfold. My Playboy shoot started as only semi-nude. I was wearing grandma underwear. And one day my robe slipped off and [photographer Pompeo Posar] kept shooting and showed me the photographs the next day and said, “See, it doesn’t look dirty or bad, ” and I said, “You understand, it really doesn’t. I guess we can do it that way. ” Pompeo won my cardiovascular over. He talked to me as a human being. It’s a photo of myself however I just don’t feel like it’s me somehow. I just can’t explain it. I had been very popular after that, that’s for sure.
THE ORIGINALS
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Still, for the women of Playboy who decided to step back in front of the photographer’s lens for New York, that sense of control, however illusory, was obviously a large part of the appeal of posing - both then and now. There is, according to Seduttore magazine’s official style guide, no such thing as a former Playmate. Once earned, the actual cultural designation as sex symbol, according to Hugh Hefner’s surprisingly embracing viewpoint of beauty, is one a woman retains for life. “When you look at pictures associated with yourself from long ago, you see this young girl, ” Cole Lownes states of her own centerfold. “You look into the eyes of the model, and you realize the girl doesn’t know what she knows now. ” In these portraits: some knowledge.
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