Flashback Friday! Originally posted Nov 22, 2009 @ 12:38 pm.
Heads-up, Scorpios! (I’m looking at you, Cappy) — the lovely and talented Rita Lee, Miss November 1977, lists your sign as one of her turn-ons.
Photographed by Richard Fegley
A certain almost unstable level of insecurity and uncertainty comes across in her interview that I think translates in to these photographs. Check out her general lack of eye contact, her sidewise glances, her closed mouth, the way her hands have to be doing something. The wiki says that the photographer, Fegley, had her pose for his portfolio and even put her in a book. I guess maybe that nervous energy, that vulnerability, made her an interesting subject for more serious photography.
“I was very naïve and men took advantage of that. I always worried about what other people thought of me.” …
She says she would never have considered posing for “some of those other magazines” and that she was surprised that the Playboy people were so professional. “I didn’t know what to expect. I’d heard all sorts of things, like they photograph your body and put another girl’s head on it, and that none of the information on the girls is real. I was afraid that maybe after all the preliminary shootings they would decide my breasts weren’t big enough or something and ask me to have plastic surgery.” (“Growing Up,” Playboy, November 1977.)
She also talks in the interview about moving out and living on her own at 17, and how it was a mistake and her parents were right about her conservative upbringing. The below shot proves that Fegley got a smile out of her eventually. But it looks like it was a battle. Judging from what she said about her past and herself in her interview, I think she may have been pretty down and vulnerable during this period.
“I used to read about Marilyn Monroe. I felt as though I could identify with her. I learned something from her. Her suicide was like a warning for me.”
Shit-oh-dear, someone needs a hug and a Xanax! I am only comfortable making that joke because she is still alive and not dead like some of these other ladies. It’s actually terrible to read the interview and see the pictures because what emerges is a glimpse at this seemingly depressed, insecure woman with valid, sad anxietes about appearance and relationships, overly sensitive to the falseness inherent to human interaction, the whole ball of wax. I kind of do wish I could give her a hug. Some souls are born lost.
GOALS:
As I get older, to develop a better understanding of myself and others. To always have a fulfilling relationship with someone.
TURNOFFS:
Phony people, particularly men who are attracted to women only because of looks.
Her repeated emphasis in both her data sheet and her interview on trust and wanting a relationship with someone who will look past her looks is heartrending to me. She must have really been burned in her past. I hope that she did find that fulfilling and ideal relationship, and that she married someone she really trusted, who deserved it, and lived happily ever after.
addendum June 4, 2010: This flashback is by way of introducing the Girls of Summer project, special Misses June, July, and August who I have picked out and researched and will begin posting up hopefully daily, probably starting on Sunday. (Got dogs in the fire tomorrow.)
Today I am forcing myself to stop watching badly dubbed Italian horror movies and tackle the long-overdue compilation of stats on last month’s playmates. Then I’m hoping to turn them into some fun graphs and factoid type blurbs.
I’d like to be able to trendspot together, but I’m having trouble thinking of trends that go deeper than the surface appearance. Hmm. So far I have some basic obvious characteristics like hair/eye color, photographer of the centerfold, age, etc., but I’d like to come up with some more fun categories.
If you think of any, give me a holler. In the meanwhile, stay tuned!
top, Donna Edmondson, Miss November 1986 (The Virgin); Janet Lupo, Miss November 1975 (The HELLA Stacked Jersey Girl); bottom, Monica Tidwell, 1973 (The Redheaded Nature Girl).
Raise your hand if you relentlessly and somewhat fetishistically stereotype your own gender.
Your final Miss November is Playboy’s November 1991 Playmate of the Month, the lovely and talented Tonja Christensen. She is last because, next to Monica Tidwell and Bebe Buell, I think she is the prettiest of the girls of November. Someday I will examine my feminine beauty ideals, but not today because I’m busy. Anyway, I am afraid that, though I saved her for last because I thought she was beautiful, it is a mixed blessing; she bears the brunt of my boredom and busy-ness, because I’ve not got time nor inclination to say much about her. Going to let the interview with her do most of the talking.
Photographs by Stephen Wayda
Blonde, blue-eyed and gutsy Tonja Marie Christensen, who just turned 20, has come a long way in the past two years — 5800 miles, to be exact, the distance from West Valley City, Utah, a sleepy suburb of Salt Lake City, to cosmopolitan Barcelona, Spain’s second largest city. There, while the Catalan capital gears up for the 1992 Olympics, she’s diligently pursuing a dual career in modeling and acting. (“A Blonde in Barcelona,*” Playboy, November 1991)
Dang, I forgot there even was a Summer Olympics in Barcelona. There are new ones coming up, you know. Everyone hurry and get jingoistic about sports! Also, buy Doritos!!
*Gracious, that is just a damned ridiculous title. Barcelona is from where many a blonde Spaniard hails. Everyone knows that there are tons of hot (and not) fair people in Spain. With over 3 million people living in the city at the time of Tonja’s residency, I sincerely doubt she stood out because of her hair color in any way, shape, or form. You may just as well have said, “A two-legged person,” or even “A person from another country who lives” … “in Barcelona.” Jesus. What a stupid, Americanized view of what Spanish people look like to advance. Shame on you, Playboy: I expect you to be more international and dashing and man-of-foreign-knowledgey than that.
Our Miss November was one of nine children, an example she doesn’t plan to follow. “I believe families should be three or four children at most,” she says.
An intriguing viewpoint for a girl from Utah. Goodness knows, I know the playmates do not like it when assumptions are made about their religion (see last entry for a brave girl who was not embarassed to be of an identifiable faith and culture) … but … come on. Hint, hint, ya know?
Two things weird me out totally about the above shot.
Her arm hair has, like, its own set of dewy crystalline eye lights shining in it.
Her pubic hair has been either dyed or cell-painted to match her fake (though lovely!) head-hair color. In the previous shots it is dark.
See, I have a couple rules of thumb for gentlemen who want to imagine ladies sans clothing — I know you are few and far between because that is like, so gross, what with our widely-documented girl cooties and all, but bear with me for the sake of those perverse and unhappy freaks among you who actually picture women naked — and I am happy to share them. First, a lady’s pubic hair is nearly always the same shade as the coarse hair of her brows. So lay the drapes aside altogether, discard their color completely, and, unless you are pretty sure the gal you are gawking at has bleached or somehow cosmetically altered them, her eyebrows are your best bet as to the color of the carpet.
Similarly, the color of her lips without the aid of gloss, lipstick, rouge, permanent surgical lining assistance, or any other type of makeup is your leading predictor of the color of her nipples. Finally, a few shades darker but in the same family of hues as the lips and “nips” follow the labia (those can get rosier/darker brown depending on her arousal level and whether she is Northern European or has stronger Sapphardic Jew DNA — Caucus mountains and Eastern/Southern Europe are less pink and more browny-purple, and obviously your ladies from Africa and its subcontinent follow suit in deeper shades as well). Take those tips to the bank, y’all. You’re welcome!
Wow, I did not even realize there was a time when LaToya Jackson did not look like a total freak made of 90% post-consumer recyclable parts. She looks comparably human here. You’d think one of her psychic friends would have warned her of the Madamism syndrome of too much plastic surgery! Better luck in your next life, LaToya.
Your magnificent Miss November 2001 was the lovely and talented and unremittently marvelous, in this shiksa’s opinion, Lindsey Vuolo. Ms Vuolo’s interview with Playboy touched on her recent trip to Israel, included a picture from her bat mitzvah, and set off a shitstorm of reactionary crossfire about pornography, sex, and religion in the conservative Jewish community, from which she valiantly refused to back down. Preach it, garrl!
Photographed by Arny Freytag – for some reason in this picture she looks like Raquel Welch, which is nothing to sneeze at, but she is a beauty in her own right and the resemblance is not present in the other pictures.
Lindsey’s Italian father converted to Judaism to marry her Russian mother. “I traveled to Israel as part of an exchange program and it was an amazing trip,” she says. “Being in Jerusalem was so emotional for me — I broke down and cried.” (“Lindsey,” Playboy, November 2001)
Holy shit, if that did not apparently ruffle feathers for her to be naked emotionally as well as physically by describing what being Jewish meant to her in terms of her personal identity and emotions. (You can bare your breasts, and you can bare your bajango*, but you can’t bare those with your soul and be religious!)
*thank you, Tina Fey, for the term “bajango.” I’ll get to the Playboy interview where she first dropped that term for ladyparts another day.
What happened next was, this guy Rabbi Shmuley Boteach caught wind of her appearance –especially her emphasis on her religion and what it meant to her identity– and publicly took Lindsey to task for posing for Playboy (though he had himself appeared in the magazine promoting his book, Kosher Sex).
Feminists and porn-purveyors alike took Lindsey’s side, and soon everyone from rabbis to radical social theorists was weighing in with their opinions on faith and sex. These are two topics that everyone has touch them in some personal way, so I’m not surprised that people felt personally authorized to comment on the issue. I remember noting in college classes that the discussions during lecture in which everyone was the most engaged usually involved universal human issues like religion, sex, or love. Everyone experiences these things, so everyone has an opinion!
Taking advantage of the publicity which resulted from the itty-bitty-titty holy war, Boteach enticed her to come to a recorded and Extremely Accusatory “discussion” with him of the issue of pornography and Judaism vis-a-vis what the religion’s teachings were and how pornography impacts marriage, traditional ideals of femininity, and sexuality. She had the balls to show up, and not only that, defend herself. Reading the interview, I felt ashamed. I could have never made it through to the end the way she does. I’m easily humiliated by disapproving men. Not so Ms. Vuolo. She has an admirable self-awareness and a respectful but strong spine of steel. Check some of these excerpts, which I’ve thoughtfully and even thought-provokingly interwoven with the quotes from the “interview”:
Shmuley Boteach: So tell me what you think about the following ideas, okay? Number one: Pornography or Playboy ultimately, far from being sexy and titillating, is actually boring and monotonous because the moment you see someone’s body in its entirety, the first few minutes, sure, it’s very exciting but after that nothing is left to the imagination. It loses its erotic allure. I mean, all studies show that when women go to bed with guys too early, it almost always destroys the relationship because the thrill of the chase is gone, the mystery is gone. The human body requires mystique in order to retain its attractiveness. There also has to be the involvement of the mind in order for there to be fantasy, and nudity and sexual over-explicitness actually hinders fantasy.
For example, as a marriage counselor, I always say to wives, don’t ever walk around the bedroom naked unless it’s time for sex and he has to earn the right to see your body naked because–
Lindsey Vuolo: I disagree with that.
SB: You disagree with that?
LV: Yeah. Because you know, my husband–well, I don’t have a husband but if I had a husband, and we share everything together and I’m his, I’ll run around naked for him. That’s for him, I mean, then he doesn’t need to see anyone else naked.
SB: I wish what you were saying was true but according to the Hite report the fact that 75% of husbands are unfaithful and the fact that half of marriages end in divorce shows that unfortunately men need variety when they feel they get bored. Many men who cheat on their wives claim to love their wives. They do it only because they need something new. So clearly, it is very possible to get bored of your wife’s body, no matter how much she runs around for you.
LV: Well, I think for all time men will always look at women whether it’s their wives or someone else. And I don’t think that they get bored, you know, they look–
RS: No, no, we know they look at women’s bodies. The question is, will they look at the same woman’s body. You’re Miss November. They’re not going to make you Miss December under any circumstances. The reason is the guys have seen you and they’ve just seen you. They want someone new now. Doesn’t that alone prove to you that pornography gets boring?
Playboy has used you and you’ll never be a playmate again.
LV: I posed for this for me. So if I’m degrading anyone, I’m just degrading myself. What other women do–
SB: But the biggest sins in life are where we hurt ourselves even more than other people.
LV: But I don’t feel like I’m hurting myself.
Holy fuckballs, what a passel of ice-cold punches to the gut. If you have sex or display yourself as sexual, you have used up your ace in the hole, blown your wad of feminine mystique, as it were, and will forever forth be undervalued. Um … is this so? I don’t even know! I just want to go shower and cry! Bitch magazine, help a Catholic girl with deep-seated Daddy Issues out:
Unwilling to cow to the rabbi, (who, it should be noted, promoted his own book in Playboy) Lindsey stood her ground, explaining that she had done nothing wrong. According to Lindsey, Playboy doesn’t even count as pornography because to her the word conjures up images of “penetration, urination, and things like that.” (“My Meidel is a Centerfold,” Bitch Magazine, Deborah Kolben, May 2002.)
Okay, well, at least I know other women will give me a hug and a “it’s okay, honey,” whether or not we are any of us sure about anything after the tirade about how men will grow tired of us and we must not be naked in front of even our husbands.
So. Quick word about this shoot: okay, obviously I have a majah girl-brain-crush on Lindsey Vuolo, but, strictly from an unbiased perspective, from the artistic standpoint, I strongly believe that this photoshoot stands head and shoulders above most of the others from the 2000’s.
It has a clear unity of vision: the story is, this super-super-cute, vintage-lingerie-loving, wholesome, upbeat gal works at an old-fashioned pie-and-coffee kind of diner as a pastry chef or baker of some kind, and it's after-hours.
If this does not melt your heart with its brain-asplodin’ cuteness, you are made of STONE and we have nothing to offer each other.
First she’s with you in the dinette, then she’s showing you around at home. It’s cut and dry and adorable as shit. Love it. Okay! Back to the hot button side of the story. Final thought, for clarification and prompting of to-be-determined further discussion:
Some have incorrectly claimed that Vuolo is the first Jewish Playmate. Vuolo herself has agreed it is more likely that she merely is the first openly Jewish Playmate. (the wiki)
This has been certainly a long enough entry already, all apologies, so perhaps we ought to save the important and striking issue of why a beautiful woman looking to be famous in America might consider her Judaism a liability rather than an asset and choose to downplay this important aspect of her heritage and womanhood (*cough, cough* Holly Madison) for another day.
But Don’t Think I’m Forgetting. I got a memory like Babar — but a figure like Bettie Page. Ow! Call me!
Do not confuse Miss November 2007, Lindsay Wagner, with the 1970’s-era Bionic Woman star and mattress spokesmodel of the same name. This one hails from Nebraska and was a ring girl for the Omaha Fight Club (she’s not in it, so it’s okay for her to talk about it, I guess).
Photographed by Stephen Wayda
I think this may be the first Miss November we’ve seen with a total and complete lack of hair, you know, Down There. Gosh. Pubic alopecia in one so young (barely legal at the time of this shoot) is a tragic thing to see. Breaks the heart. Maybe next time you get a haircut, you could sweep it up and send her a little merkin? Just to keep her warm. Hardwood floors get cold in the winter, y’all.
This Lindsay can’t bend steel, but she’s got a straight right that will have you seeing stars. “We have an Omaha Fight Club,” she says, “and I’m a ring girl when my brothers compete. I don’t fight, but I train in self-defense and practice with a lot of guys.” (“Nebraksa Knockout,” Playboy, November 2007)
“I thought I’d never make Playboy in a million years,” Lindsay says. “I’m confident in the way I look, but you know how girls sometimes have the feeling they’re not good enough to accomplish something?”
I think a shade of that concern shows, but only a shade. I don’t know what these girls think that Playboy is, that they get so nervous. Unless it’s the money that freaks them out — I mean it is a big shot at some pretty good cash if you don’t blow it. I guess that could be spooky. Still, it’s not like a firing squad: it’s just a camera.
The only shot that I think in this spread has any merit, composition-wise, is the centerfold up top. It’s pretty hackneyed at this point to have the girl in men’s clothing like she has just come from raiding your closet, but it’s still cute. And she manages to make it look fresh. The best thing about all these pictures is that she has a nice smile and good eye contact. She doesn’t look frozen or fearful or dramatic. Just friendly and fun-loving. That’s appropriate for her age and how she’s been styled and sold in the interview. Good stuff all around, just not, like “great,” which is totally outside of her control. Her end of the quality is solid. And that is me being really strong and not crazy, because the truth is, she looks to me like my dear friendoh the Cappy’s ex, who you need to know is a no-good slack-cunted slagwhore cumdumpster, and I am battling to keep the strong association I have with her appearance out of my opinion of this nice girl, here, and be fair and not let my head get hot and melt my brain. (I get really, really protective of my friends, to the point that if I find someone has injured them in some way I can turn on that person on a dime *snap* and try to set them on fire with my thoughts.)
You can hit Ms. Wagner up on the myspace (current mood: “sad :(” — that is no good at all, maybe you could send her a glittery graphic or something, okay?), but I cannot, as she breaks my Movie Dating Rule: she was born after the release of Mannequin (1987). She can throw me a wink in a couple years, when I’ve once more lowered my standards! I’m thinking next stop, The Sandlot (1993).
Ugh, thanks Playboy cover, for reminding me that, besides being a cheating fuckface in his sporting life, Barry Bonds is also a cheating fuckface off the diamond. He even bought That Woman a house in Scottsdale so he could boff her during spring training while his wife was home with their daughter. Meanwhile, he drug his first wife through a humiliating series of court battles to keep her from getting his earnings, which she wanted to continue to sock away in savings for the education of their two sons. Gar, what a dishonorable goddamned waste of a human being all around he is. Such potential, so many opportunities handed to him, and such terrible choices he has made. Terrible choices. That is so weak. Ugh! Now I’m in a bad mood.
The lovely and talented Swedish-born Ulrika Ericsson was in America working hard as a swimsuit model and looking for acting gigs when she posed for Playboy as Miss November 1996.
Photographed by Arny Freytag
Get it? She is done up like the newsboy, at the newsstand in front of the display of Playboys. “Wuxtree, wuxtree!” Super-cute. Great theme, well-executed, and she has a very sweet innocence that makes it playfully tease-y instead of costumey and skankeriffic.
However, the acting thing must not have panned out, because other than Playboy credits, the imdb lists her most recent work in front of the camera as being a host for a Swedish show called “Nyehtsmorgon.”
Nyhetsmorgon är TV4:s morgonprogram i TV. Programmet var vid starten 1992 det första dagliga morgonprogrammet i svensk tv. Nyhetsmorgon har hämtat inspiration från amerikanska NBCs The Today Show, som var världens första morgonprogram på TV när det började sändas i januari 1952. Nyhetsmorgon är Sveriges största morgonprogram med över fem miljoner tittare i veckan och 1300 timmar sändningstid om året.[1] Konkurrenter i genren är Gomorron Sverige i SVT1 och Vakna med The Voice i Kanal 5. (the wiki)
Ran that through a handy-dandy translator and got much less hilarious results than I was hoping for (sometimes translation software spews wonderfully broken interpretations of the original text) but here they are:
Nyhetsmorgon is TV4’s morgonprogram* in television. The programme was at the start 1992 the first daily morgonprogrammet on Swedish television. Nyhetsmorgon have drawn inspiration from the American NBCs The Today Show, which was the world’s first morgonprogram on the television when it started sent in January 1952. Nyhetsmorgon is Sweden’s largest morgonprogram with more than 5 million viewers in the week and 1300 hours transmission time of year. Competitors in the genre are Gomorron Sweden in SVT1 and wake up with the Voice of Channel 5.
*let’s all agree that means “morning program;” I mean, I know we must beware of false cognates and such when attempting translation but I’m going to make the leap.
That picture is adorable. I am going to assume Ms. Ericsson is okay with what life has handed her, career-wise, over the years, because of this quote from her Playmate interview
“The Vikings understood that good looks don’t last forever. Their idea of success was to die young, go to Valhalla and fight with the gods against the giants.” (“How Swede It Is,” Reg Potterton. Playboy, November 1996)
And this picture is super-triple-dog adorable. Also, enormous. It’s wallpaper sized. You’re welcome!
Because I am a spectacularly great friend, I used that same software program to give you an opening line to lay on Ulrika should you ever get the opportunity: “I am an agent for Hollywood. I have a very big part for you.” “Jag är en agent för Hollywood. Jag har en mycket stor roll för er.”
The lovely and talented Divini Rae had already come a long way and traveled the world before posing for the centerfold as Playboy’s Miss November, 2003.
Photographed by Arny Freytag
Growing up in a home with no running water or electricity, Divini became an avid reader and graduated early from high school. … A vacation to Sydney, Australia led to modeling and voice-over work. (“Divini Inspiration,” Playboy, November 2003)
ITEMS I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT:
A bottle of water at all times, a notepad & pen, dental floss, Chapstick, mango butter lotion & antibacterial hand sanitizer.
FIVE PEOPLE I’D LIKE TO INTERVIEW:
Baz Luhrmann, J.D. Salinger, Marlon Brando, Diane Sawyer & Hugh Hefner, again. (data sheet)
These days, you can catch Ms. Rae on her official site or on the myspace. She is still active in modeling and is pursuing acting and writing as well.
Oh, man. I am so glad I saw this cover of Daryl Hannah. It is hella going to be Daryl Hannah day around here soon. I think about her all the time. Fun facts I randomly can access in my memory banks about Daryl Hannah: 1) She slept with a teddy bear and sucked her thumb well past the age of high school. 2) She and JFK, Jr. had an intricate and complicated nearly-lifelong relationship that spanned the gamut from friends to first sexual relationship to occasional engagement to an eventual bond like brother and sister. His death drove her in to private mourning for several years. 3) She’s never been officially diagnosed, but agrees she is probably borderline autistic, most likely being a rare female with Asperger’s (usually it’s the guys who have that). Wow, I am a huge Daryl Hannah fan. Maybe it’s best we live far apart. ‘Scuse me while I freak out over my freakishness … I just made myself uneasy …
I actually really like Raquel Gibson, Miss November 2005. She seems to be a fun, family-oriented girl, but also a serious multitasker with plans for taking on even more, so it resulted in a surprisingly entertaining Playboy interview.
Photographs by Stephen Wayda and Arny Freytag
Plus she has a stunning pair of eyebrows. Seriously, those things are wicked-great.
Raquel–who already has a culinary school degree
[from Chef Jean Pierre Cooking School in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida] and a real estate license–plans to go back to school to become a pediatrician someday, with a practice someplace warm. “I can’t stand the cold,” she says. “I can’t see myself dressed like an Eskimo walking down the streets of New York, and I’d miss going to the beach and playing football.” (“Raquel’s World Party,” Playboy, November 2005.)
Just don’t ask Miss November to go into the water–there are too many sharks. “The news will show a helicopter flying over with 200 sharks in the water and people just swimming and playing around them. I think, Are you guys dumb?”
Yes! Finally! Someone agrees with me. What the hell is the matter with you people who are all in to sharks? I believe I have the most logical phobia on the planet in my fear of sharks. I acknowledge it’s a little nuts to open my eyes in the shower every 30 seconds to check and make sure none have swum up the drain and are preparing to sink their zillion rows of teeth in to my foot, but still!
If you cannot at least muster enough care for your life not to place it in peril by descending in to the depths of the ocean (which is another planet to begin with; you cannot even breathe through your mouth under there and live), then show some fear and respect of God and his creations, both yourself and the shark. Just ugh all around and a heartfelt shudder to boot.
Raquel did not end up pursuing her degree in pediatrics, remaining busy in the spokesmodel and entertainment worlds instead. She often models these days with her older sister C.J. (one of her five siblings, of which she is the baby). They bill themselves as the Gibson Sisters.
CJ Gibson. Yes, I found and used the one picture of her in a Yankees jersey probably in existence. It’s my blog!
If you are interested in some lengthy flash presentations and embedded music that you have to scour the creatively font-faced page to turn off, give Raquel’s official site a spin. She asks that you please not contact her to attempt to book anything pornograhpic or TFP.
Oh my god, how dare you imply she would do pornographic modeling with her sister, what is the matter with you?!
TFP = Trade for Prints, a handy piece of largely-chicanerous-publicity practice in which neither party — photographer nor model — gets any money out of the transaction; it’s purely to boost notoriety for both and is generally a very bum deal for the model, as the photog pads his portfolio and can use the pics forever in gallery shows, etc, while the model just has one more nudie photoshoot out of probably a dozen jammed in her little notebook. It’s a move that a lot of amateurs fall for; glad to see she is too wise to go for it!
Your Y2K Miss November was Buffy Tyler, who posed for her Playboy centerfold and soon joined Hef’s at that time very large posse of girlfriends, coming and going at the mansion in Holmby Hills as she pleased, because what’s a 70-something old man with a business to run and seven other girlfriends going to say about it?
Photographed by Stephen Wayda
Eventually, somebody had something to say about it, of course. Buffy got the boot when everyone else did, which is to say around February, 2002 when (until recently) brilliant Holly Madison dug her french-manicured fingertips deep enough in to Hugh Hefner’s inner circle to become his number one gal and, with Kevin Burns, select two other distinct women — Bridget Marquhardt, the sweet, quiet one, and Kendra Wilkinson, the sporty, brash one, both of whom were clearly coached to play second fiddle to Holly’s alpha status as brains and beauty of the operation — and sell him on the idea of the highly marketable “Girls Next Door.”
Thus began a very clever publicity juggernaut, including well-covered frequent trips to Disneyland and the Bajas, film crew coverage of which eventually got them all on cable television and has essentially revived the then-flagging company. The Girls Next Door and its spinoffs and specials have established a firm and even semi-legitimate toehold for Playboy television projects on more channels than merely their own, opening a wide door for expansion of their corporation. Unfortunately, the recent dips in the market across the board have meant that, despite their being more famous and popular than ever, proportionally, Playboy has suffered some losses and seen their stocks drop.
The Gentleman even mentioned to me over soosh bombasticos not long back that he’d heard it was rumored that Hef, who is a 70% shareholder, was finally looking to sell. This does not mean that he is trying to totally get out from under Playboy like it is some lead balloon that is falling fast, do not mistake the feelers for that, but rather that he recognizes they are presently holding on to an unfortunately precaroius top in a notoriously difficult business (its ups and downs mirror the economy and, as a businessman, you are constantly threatened by cheap and abundant competition; think about it).
With their recent highly-public successes, despite their shaky numbers in the last year, now’s still the time to finally start taking some of the bids from media mega-conglomerates like Hearst and Conde-Nast, who have approached Hef time and again over the years hoping to acquire his empire under other names and start reaping the benefits while still appearing not to have their hands soiled by the skin-rag trade. (Don’t be fooled by articles that have other corporations listed as the top bidders — media peoples is veddy tricksy, okay.)
Again — *sigh* — I am so disappointed in Holly Madison for abandoning her project right when she was on top. This could have all been hers to share! This is partly her victory! What a time to develop short-sighted integrity, over a sleazy scumbag magician, no less. I thought she was flintier and more patient than this. I mean, I empathize: I have loved me some rotten, rangy, skeevy, drug-addled assholes in my day. But they totally ruined me, so, it’s like, what is she thinking. Whoa. Maybe that’s part of my disappointment. I’ll have to think about that.
Back to Ms. Tyler. Hit her up on the myspace (current mood: “flirty!”) or gawk at pics of her with sometimes-girlfriend and present roommate Suzanne Stokes (Miss February 2000). And may I add that, when it comes to sexual behaviors, one of the few things I hate more than overly-slowly-paced foreplay — get a move on and let’s do this!, is how I see it — is chicks who only lez out when there’s boys around. I’m not surprised, given the dates of their Playboy appearances, that they’re trotting out this tired gimmick, though. Remember in the early 2000’s when faux lesbianism in front of men was all the rage? Girls all half-heartedly tonguing at every barstool, not even closing their eyes. Lame. If you’re not going to do it in the dressing room, then don’t dry hump on the mainstage, you know what I mean? False advertising: I decry it!
I like to do really outrageous things – I jump headfirst instead of feetfirst. I cannot sit still.” Oh really? “I was dating this guy and had his name tattooed on my rear,” she confesses. “The next morning I said to myself, ‘Oh, Buffy, what did you do?’ Now that I’m no longer with him, I’m going to have to get and arrow drawn through it or something.” (“She’s So Buffy,” Playboy, November 2000.)
As much as I just bashed Ms. Tyler (sorry, chitlin!), I do think that’s a cute and a fun story right there. I’m not an illustrated lady, myself, but if I can say I admire a thing about those with tattoos, I guess it’s that they feel things passionately, and that is always a sweet and endearing quality in a person.
I note that Chyna is the cover model. As much as I admire an all-around kickass lady and good-time-gal, I have to say that these days I would more likely pay her to stay dressed than to take it off. Sorry, Chyna. Please don’t come and squash me.
Miss November 1985 was the lovely and talented Pamela Saunders. Despite claiming to hate public speaking when she was younger, the Texan bartender spilled a lot of personal refried beans to Playboy during her disarmingly candid and rueful, charming interview.
Photographed by Kerry Morris
“I love men to death,” she declares. “But, you know, they aggravate me. I let men get to me, and I’ve got a nervous stomach. I don’t think I want to get married.” (“Dealing With Dallas,” Playboy, November 1985)
“I guess working in a bar ruined me — you know, watching the way some of these married men act.” Pam medicates her nervous stomach with a steady diet of beer and junk food.
That is totally the way to do it! See, what did I tell you?? Funyuns and Newcastle and a gypsy curse — it’s a three-step weight loss program and it could be right for you!
“I suppose [men] think girls, especially blondes, are stupid. Well, you know,” she says, laughing, “I’m not a true blonde. … I am a klutz. I fall down stairs, spill things. I have to watch myself out on a date.”
This picture is adorable. And finally, in addition to being a klutz who likes beer and junk food, Ms. Saunders doesn’t give a shit about your social niceties when it comes to spic-n-span eat-off-the-kitchen-floor nest-feathering either:
“No, I’m a klutz; a slob, too.”
It’s love. Call me!
Final thought — Seth Godin was interviewed in this issue, just after the MENSA spread, about his work with then-employers Spinnaker Software, though he is better known now as the co-founder of Yoyodyne and for coining business terms like Purple Cows and permission marketing. You should check Playboy out, because that old saw about the articles being really good is actually the god’s own truth, y’all.
I am beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel. This is the last Playmate post for today. Then four tomorrow, four Monday, the really fun final post for Tuesday in which I’m planning to crunch some of the gals’ numbers and do some trendspotting, and then I’m going to be forever done with the Miss Novembers. Whew!
The lovely and talented Cara Wakelin was Playboy’s Miss November 1999.
Photograph by Richard Fegley
That centerfold picture is largely garbage, poorly lit and ill-conceived, story-wise, just overall not as strong a composition as this project has lead me to expect from Fegley. Predictable and lacking a certain joy or playfulness. But this picture harkens back to vintage pin-up style, a great composition that is also freaking adorable!
When Cara’s mom read that the Playboy 2000 Playmate search bus was coming to their hometown of Toronto looking for new Playmates, she urged her hesitant daughter to go for a photo test. Thank goodness she did.” (“Catch of the Day,” Playboy, November 1999)
Q : This is your first modeling gig. How did your mother persuade you to try out for Playboy?
A : When she saw the newspaper article about the Playmate 2000 search, she started jumping up and down, saying, “You have to do this. You can do it.” I’ve never been very confident about my appearance. As we pulled into the parking lot, I saw ten beautiful blondes waiting in line. I said, “Mom, take me home. What am I doing here?” She said, “Cara, if you don’t get out of this car right now, I’m dragging you in there.”
Golf claps for Mrs. Wakelin, please, everyone? If you want to send her a fruit basket thanking her for her maternal powers of persuasion, airmail that shit to Canadialand, and mind you wrap it up nicely so it doesn’t get frostbitten. Do you all have even postal service up there in the icy North, or do you guys just tape your mail to a moose’s antlers, point him South, slap his ass, and hope for the best?
Besides making a cameo as the Princess in Death to Smoochy, one of my favorite movies, Ms. Wakelin also wins my love for appearing on an episode of the short-lived talk show of one of my all-time favorite athletes and a man who has always been in my top five list of People I Would Like to Be Stuck In An Elevator With: John McEnroe!! She was a guest on his show for one of the last episodes and appeared alongside wonderfully creepy gap-toothed comedian Paul Scheer.
Maybe it’s just me and I’ve watched too many James Bond films in my life (oh, my god, like that’s possible), but does anyone else automatically bump Eastern European men and women a few points up the hotness scale? The accent, the Otherness of their features and upbringing, the idea of them maybe having done unspeakable things in desperate times — it’s all superhot spy-type shit. Maybe it’s some kind of residual Cold War “forbidden territory” thing, even? Anyways, I mention this by way of introducing Inga Drozdova, the lovely and talented Miss November, 1997, who has the distinction of being Playboy’s only Latvian Playmate of the Month to date.
Photographed by Arny Freytag
Ms. Drozdova was a pop star in Russia before coming to America. Please enjoy this cover of “Fever,” or “лихорадка ремикс,” as it is known in Mother Russia.
Inga Drozdova – Fever (Cover in Russian)
I’d say it is the worst thing I’ve ever heard, but I’ve heard Mia Farrow sing. Next to that, Ms. Drozdova’s arrangement and rendition of what until today was a song I thought could not go wrong is still a goddamned prize-winning operetta.
Conservatives back home may have rebelled against the new, Westernized Russia — the McDonaldsization of their motherland, they call it — but Inga embraces change, even personifies it. When she was a little girl there were no sex symbols in Russia. The only pin-ups were pictures of tractors. “I like the new way. I want to be a singer, an actress, a sexual woman and a businesswoman,” she says. (“From Moscow With Love,” Playboy, November 1997)
Thanks to the end of the Cold War we can finally introduce you to a Playmate whose turn-ons include both Pushkin and The X-Files. Only the bold appeals to Miss November, and that includes bold, handsome men of any nationality. “Men can be sexy, too,” she says.
Hell yeah, X-Files and sexy men! I like this chick.
“I’d like to pursue my science studies more, but there is so little time,” she says. Another subject that requires more study is the sort of man she wants. “Russian men, Australians, Americans — I don’t know who is best. I like them all.” Thus far, red-blooded Americans have responded to her the same way the Russian army did: with wide-eyed appreciation. “I am a noticeable person,” she says.
Inga owes her impeccable command of the English language to her years spent at the Moscow Linguistic University, where she majored in finance and business law. “My grades were nearly perfect. But then, I’m a perfectionist,” she says.
“Since my centerfold was successful in Russia, I wanted to do the American edition,” she says. “I am a Playboy fan.” On a recent visit to California she signed autographs in Hollywood — a wish come true for the former teen beauty queen from Latvia.
The lovely and talented Reneé Tenison, Miss November 1989, was named Playmate of the Year in 1990, making her Playboy’s first African-American Playmate of the Year. She hailed from my family’s home state of Idaho, land of potatoes, cricks, daveneaus, and … something else… oh, right, the Aryan nation (dicks).
Photographed by Arny Freytag
Reneé, who grew up in Melba, Idaho, is special for many reasons. First, she’s a twin, and her sister Rosie is every bit as beautiful as Reneé.” (“The Toast of Melba,” Playboy, November 1989)
Reneé posed with her twin sister Rosie for Playboy in 2002.
And then Reneé’s parents’ marriage is interracial — one of the first such in the state of Idaho, which is not known for its black population. “My mom, who is white, and my dad, who is black, met each other in the Fifties, and they had to go to Nevada to get married, because no one would marry them in Idaho.”
“When they came back to Melba [population approximately 300], they couldn’t even go to the grocery together. I really admire them for staying together. There aren’t many blacks in Idaho, maybe three thousand out of a population of more than a million.”
A former contestant in the Miss Idaho USA pageant, Ms. Tenison moved to first Boise, then Los Angeles with her boyfriend, and has made a modest career of television appearances, including roles on Living Single, Married With Children, and Judging Amy, to name a few credits from over the years.
She also had a cameo in the sequel to the Nutty Professor. She will turn forty-one on December 2nd. Birthday wishes! Finally, for the record, Idaho has come a long way in terms of progressive viewpoints since the ’50’s and even since the time of her interview, so please don’t think it is all rednecks, racists, and meth addicts. They comprise only 95% of the population, tops, at any given moment. The other 5% is dead, incarcerated, or passed out in a goose blind. (Why do I keep sick-burning things that apply to me?)
Finally, dig the cover: once again, the guys at Playboy believed they had solved the murder of Jimmy Hoffa. Amazing!
Keeping up with the lovely and talented Jeana Keough (nee Tomasino), Miss November 1980, is purely exhausting. I will try to give you the highlights and just link to more in-depth explanations, because, holy heck, this woman has been one busy bee in the past few decades.
Photographed by Richard Fegley
Okay, first things first. She was married to Matt Keough, former All-Star pitcher for the Oakland A’s and, until four years ago, Billy Beane’s righthand man (read Moneyball. read Moneyball. read Moneyball.). After he was involved in a near-fatal drunk-driving hit-and-run accident in 2005, wherein he struck a pedestrian and fled the scene in a drunken daze, Keough was incarcerated for three months down in the sunny OC.
He and Ms. Tomasino parted ways not too long after that; in fact, according to this article (which calls her “Jenna” and quotes him as saying they are “fine”), it was a big “family fight” that lead him to leave the house after heavy drinking to begin with.
I actually didn’t know that about Keough, or forgot if I did hear about it. What I always think about with him is how he almost got killed in Arizona during Spring Training in the early 90’s. He got hit in the head by a ball. He survived, but it was really lucky. And thinking of that, despite that he was the pitcher and the batter almost struck him, always makes me think of the time in the early years of ball, when a spitball thrown by Carl Mays hit Earl (edit 7/17: Ray, not Earl) Chapman in the head and killed him outright, making him the only player in the history of ball to get killed by a pitch, and how the spitball is now outlawed because of that and some other stuff … Keough’s situation was totally different, though — in fact, I actually am embarassed and wish I hadn’t run off on that tangent, but I got a shitload of pictures so at least there’s that.
Okay, so what has she done for us lately? Ms. Tomasino has continued to act — oh did I forget to mention she was in Mel Brooks’ History of the fucking World: Part I? because she WAS! amazing! She played the Vestal Virgin. Pretty rad, huh?!— but she is now playing a role more suited to her than that of a virgin: herself.
She was until last summer one of the women featured on Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Orange County. Here is her official site as a realtor, including a blog which is mainly just updates from her account on the twitter.
She is also an official co-spokesperson for Düzoxin, a duty she shares along with fitness model and infomercial poser Ali Sonoma; mixed-martial-artist and athletic products spokesmodel Jessica Pene (what the what?! HECK, YEAH! She sounds awesome! I am following up on her or my name is not Sportsy McViolentpants); and homemaker and makeup developer Ramona Singer, who stars on Real Housewives of New York.
Disclaimer: This post and the links I threw up just now to the spokespersons’ sites do not translate to an endorsement of the weight-loss product Düzoxin. First of all, never trust a product with an umlaut in it. I’m a big anti-umlaut guy from way back. Second, I think we all know crazy crash diets and pills are not a safe, sane, or lasting way to get fit.
The only healthy way to lose weight is diet and exercise, and the best way to get started is with the help of a qualified nutritionist or professional trainer. Orrrr you can do like I did and eat lots of Funyons and ready-cooked bacon straight out of the fridge, sit on your ass drinking Newcastle and watching ball all day, head out to pick up some teriyaki chicken bowl between games, hit a gypsy child with your car, get cursed by his grandma, and suddenly find the pounds are literally melting off.
Gypsy curse/diet and exercise. Six of one, half dozen of the other.
Though she has quit the Real Housewives, people who care about her show have hinted that she will be coming back, so don’t go breaking out the noose just yet if you’re a big fan.
“I have to work and the summer is the best time for selling real estate.
“After four years of doing this, I really needed to focus on work and doing college searching with Colton and flying off to see Shane’s games. I needed to focus on me.”
She added: “I’ve been really busy working on a book and possibly doing another show because I am kind of missing it a little bit!” (“Housewives‘ Keough hints at new show.” Martin, Lara. DigitalSpy, 27 November 2009.)
I just bet. I have a feeling that as long as she has breath in that lovely body, Ms. Tomasino will be using it to her advantage. You keep on keepin’ on, girl!
The most recent addition to the family of lovely and talented Miss Novembers is 2009’s Playboy Playmate of the Month, Kelley Brooke Thompson.
Photographed by Arny Freytag
Miss D and I were talking about the television program “The Girls Next Door” a little while back and I commented, “Don’t even talk to me about Holly Madison right now; I am so mad at her. I would’ve credited her with more brains than this. I’m so disappointed in her.”
This was in reference to the I-once-thought-shrewd Ms. Madison having lost her mind, broken up with Hugh Hefner, and moved out of the mansion to be with that filthy hobo illusionist Criss Angel, who has, on top of that, now broken up with her. Both Miss D and I were completely familiar with the details of all this: I don’t have cable but Miss D keeps me up to speed on the choice, juicier details of reality television, and naturally I keep my own eye on goings-on in the Playboy empire. We are not the only ones, it seems! Ms. Thompson credits “The Girls Next Door,” E!’s reality show about the life of the playmates at Hef’s mansion in Holmby Hills, as the inspiration for her decision to become a nude model.
Kelley has wanted to be a Playmate ever since she became a fan of “The Girls Next Door” four years ago. “I immediately fell in love with Hef and the girls on that show, and I was, like, ‘Wow, it would be really awesome to experience something like that. It’d be like a dream.'” (“Lone Star,” Playboy, November 2009)
You keep on chasing the dream, kiddo! I think Ms. Thompson looks pretty sweet and natural. No hate from this corner.
In keeping with the modern age of her appearance in the magazine, you can hit Ms. Thompson up on the myspace (her current mood is “giggly”!) or the twitter any ol’ time, although her myspace profile is set to private, so you will need an account and an accepted friend request from her to view her pictures. Her most recent tweet is: “Don’t twitter and drink lol”. Words to live by.
Kelley has the mixed bag of blessings of being the Playmate of the Month in the issue of Playboy featuring Marge Simpson on its cover. All hail the gimmicks brought about by the impending death of print media! I say it’s a mixed blessing because, while it means this issue is going to sell bunches more copies than normal, Ms. Thompson may find her pictorial and interview overshadowed by the Simpson shenanigans as far as what is being paid attention to within the pages of the issue. Good luck, kiddo! Time will tell!
Kaya Christian, Miss November 1967, was previously a diving and backstroke champ, then a water ballerina, and finally was certified as a SCUBA instructor just before this issue of Playboy went to print. I guess what I’m saying is, she’s in to watersports.
Photographed by Bill Figge and Ed DeLong
You know what I’ve noticed? It seems like the more vintage the playmate, the more the chance you will find a few butt shots. I don’t just mean shots where there is a naked hind end in the picture, I mean ones where the whole composition is framed around it; where it is solely the focal point, like you don’t even see boobs or anything else, practically.
It just seems like if a playmate is from the mid-60’s to late 70’s, you are practically guaranteed at least one photograph of the model looking over her shoulder or in profile with her ass aimed at the camera. Playboy has really went the boob-focused route since the 80’s and 90’s, all the way to the early 2000’s, and it seems it has been done at the price of the derriere. Sometimes the back side can be the best side, guys. It is now retro to have just-buns-pics in nudie spreads. Write that down.
A California native who spent her childhood in Georgia, Kaya enjoyed painting and music (so far, so good), late nights/early mornings (still solid), and listed as her idea of a good meal “shellfish and milkshakes.” Screeeee. What the unholy fuck?! Get out of the car, Ms. Christian. You’re walking. That’s easily the grossest thing I’ve heard all week, and most of my countrymen cooked a bird carcass in the last two days (the nasty phrases and descriptions that get bandied about when the subject is poultry roasting truly revolt me).
One of her turn-offs was “draft-card burners.” Oh, my. Sounds like the little swimming, naked girl has her some political opinions, enough so to list that in Playboy. Why don’t you go hoark down a bucket of oysters and a strawberry shake, sister, and save the sanctimonious shit for a rag that ain’t built on skin? Nobody cares if you uphold traditional family values (not to mention that the issue of the appropriateness of a draft for the Vietnam War was never, ever, except in the cheapest of rhetoric, about patriotism and being a good or a bad person).
This is what I was trying to point out in the last post, when I talked about Donna Edmondson and what she went through after admitting to being a virgin. The whole socio-religious-politics and porn thing just don’t mix. They don’t have to. I just think that if you try, you’re missing the point. It’s Playboy, honey. It’s not a pageant.
This is an example of a legit super-clever cover. See how her hips and ass form the bunny’s head and the straps that snake around the open back make his ears? Very nicely done. Another Beth Hyatt/Pompeo Posar pairing.
Weirdly, they talk about her work as
…laboring in the catacombish darkness of one of the West Coast’s largest photo-processing labs.
Thoughts on that? She talks about going to Catalina, so she’s in So-Cal. What’s down in the LA area in the way of Kodak-Eastman, etc? Because I could not at all place that reference.
Playboy’s Miss November 1986, the lovely and talented Donna Edmondson, was named the Playmate of the Year in 1987, fitting given that her high school yearbook predicted she was “Most Likely to Become a Bunny.” (What the hell kind of high school yearbook adviser approves that as a category?!) However, her more lasting claim to fame has been her reknown as The Virgin Playmate.
Photographed by Arny Freytag and Stephen Wayda
She had at least gotten to first base; that was her position on her softball team in high school (rimshot!). Actually, it was, in all seriousness — she played first base for her high school in Greensboro, North Carolina. But back to the more interesting issue. Quite the controversy was sparked by the 20-year-old real estate agent’s vow of virginity, which she discussed in her Playmate interview.
“Men are wonderful, but I haven’t really let one close enough to me that I can talk about sex the way some girls can. Virginity isn’t something you discuss. I’m not ashamed of still having mine, mind you. It’s just not something I really want to talk about — except, of course, with the man who takes it away from me.” (“Sold on Donna,” Playboy, November 1986)
I thought about that when I posed for my layout — imagining the kind of sex I’ll one day have. I don’t know when or where it will happen. But I do know it’ll be with somebody I know and love.”
That’s pretty much all she said, but some fits were pitched and fell back in because of where America was, pornography-wise at this time. Let me bend your ear a tick on this topic, if it is news to you. What Ms. Edmondson accidentally stepped her pretty feet in was a total quagmire of hypocrisy and legal issues which had not much to do with her but plenty to do with the Meese Commission and how entertainment dealt with and tacitly sold the lifestyle of the modern single, the aftermath of the Sexual Revolution including the devastating consequences of HIV, and general assumptions of viewer maturity made by media distribution outlets vis-a-vis sexual morals at that particular juncture. What you had was a total flood of the market with new porn and ever-developing potential technologies for its procurement. So you had morality cops panicking bigtime.
Think about it. There was an explosion of private media possibilities in the 1980’s, and they were readily affordable to Joe Vaseline, which means, no matter where the man of the house stashed them, the chance lurked that Junior, too, would have access. Suddenly you could get porn in a pack of spank-sock’s worth of new forms, an embarassment of riches: direct-to-VHS format, dedicated adult cable channels, and even at the good ol’ liquor store from the more and more competing –and niche– skin magazines all making porn less controlled and more widely sold than ever before. Oh, the heyday! But of course, religion and politics intervened.
Sitcom stars, rock musicians, magazine publishers, freaking everyone was caught by Tipper Gore and Edwin Meese with their dicks in their hands on Capitol Hill, and the religious right was burning Blondie records for moral turpitude. Like, Jesus Jumped-Up Christ-Bananas! That is some ticklish shit to accidentally have come your way! And you’d think they would have all been proud of her …
I will let Ms. Edmondson’s official Playboy biography tell the rest of this interesting story.
The text to my original pictorial announced my virginity — and that created quite a stir. Also at this time, the anti-pornography report of the Meese Commission had prompted all 7-Elevens to pull the magazine from their shelves. I was thrown right in the middle of the scandal! All the talk shows immediately wanted to book the virgin PMOY from the Bible Belt. Joan Rivers made a huge deal out of my virginity on her show, but I just explained that you don’t have to have sex to be sexy.
On Larry King’s show, one caller accused me of not being religious because I let men see my body. But I don’t think that posing in Playboy has anything to do with whether I’m a good person. I knew I wasn’t hurting anyone. I defended myself by saying that God made us nude. We were born that way!
But I don’t regret a single moment. I thought the pictures were beautiful and tasteful, and all the Playboy people treated me very well. It was a great experience that I will never forget.
So how did the story work out for Ms. Edmondson? Seems it worked out smashingly, so in the haters’ faces. Once again, her words:
I took a job as a tax accountant, and on my first day of work I met the man who would become my husband. It was his last day of work; our eyes met, and I just knew he was the one. So I asked HIM out, we had lunch together the next week and we were together from then on.
As for my former claim to fame — as the virgin PMOY — all I can say is: Not anymore! Lots of love to you!
Dig the cover: ironically, Joan Rivers, who gave Ms. Edmondson such “holy hell,” so to speak, over the next several months after this issue was published, was herself profiled in the magazine the very same month. So it’s okay to be interviewed but not to pose? Or is it just for young women, or ones who you perceive as less bright than yourself, that the you-cannot-be-a-role-model-and-be-in-Playboy’s-pages applies? Is it that if a woman wants to be sexy she must want to be sexual? Do you enjoy pointing out hypocrisy only when it is not you, yourself, who is being a hypocrite? Where are the lines in the sand for you, Joanie? Is it not merely the case that you want attention at any cost and have made a career of glomming on to hot button people and topics in order to clutch every possible shred of spotlight in your cruel, manicured claws? Booyakasha!
Sorry, I do not normally take such personal issue with anyone who has appeared on camera with a Muppet, but Joan Rivers literally makes her living by being a mean hag, so screw her. Her career could have been great, she could have been an important special woman in the history of females on television, and she pissed it away to keep the level of fame she was accustomed to, with no integrity. Fuck Joan Rivers.
Another playmate who began as a bunny, 1965’s Miss November was the lovely and talented Pat Russo, a Connecticut girl who modeled briefly in Manhattan for the famous Barbizon Agency(kind of scammy in my opinion but some real careers have started there, so I’m not going to hate too hard). She hated the cold, relocated to Florida not too much later, and said in her interview that, after one winter in Florida, “‘Autumn in New York’ was just another pretty song as far as I was concerned!” She was scouted for the centerfold while working at the Miami club (“Pat Pending,” Playboy, November 1965).
Photographed by Pompeo Posar
This is kind of a weird one. I believe that Playboy did two different photoshoots (very common), but the stylists communicated poorly … if they communicated at all. Here’s what I think happened with this shoot.
Maybe the people in charge of hair and makeup on the different days this shoot was done were in a fight and not speaking, or maybe they had a conversation about ideas for Ms. Russo’s “look” but came away without a unity of vision, or even maybe some other type of accident or act of God intervened vis-a-vis the two different colored hairpieces, styling, etc. I mean, the girl is blonde one time and solidly ash brunette the next; she doesn’t even look like the pictures were taken in the same year, let alone afternoon.
Whatever happened here, too much time has passed to tell. But the end result is that it appears from some of the pictures, when you take the spread as a whole, as though Ms. Russo could be two almost totally different women.
All pictures are of her, though — I verified it with her Yahoo! groups fan club leader (last post on their bulletin board was in December of 2006, but the moderator still checks his email, bless his vintage-pin-up-lovin’ heart; thanks again for the lightning-fast response time, buddy!).
Speaking of styling, the cover is a blatant and (I checked the table of contents) totally unattributed rip off of the magnificent, incredible, erotic work of photographer and personal patron saint Sam Haskins, specifically his picture book/mystery/western short story Cowboy Kate (1964). I guess imitation is the highest form of flattery, but I am so genuinely bummed and perturbed by the fact that you might mistake the originality and brilliance of this composition —
Totally uncredited rip-off photographed by Pompeo Posar. (Model’s name is Beth Hyatt.) Pompeo, I am hella disappointed in you.
— the parted lips which echo the round opening of the gun barrel, the swinging curtain of blonde hair beneath the rounded black cowboy hat, the always-a-great-idea toplessness — as belonging to some cover designer at Playboy (all respect to their often-clever work) and not to the living god that is Sam Haskins that I do believe, holy shit, you guys, December is going to have to be Official Sam Haskins Month! I will do my best daily throughout December to scrounge up some of my saved photos from his enormous and thought-provoking body of work that are either permissible or I can reasonably say are ads and therefore in the public domain.
Boy, oh boy! Let’s see if I can continue my streak of not getting sued before the year is up!
I never thought I’d say this, but I am getting pretty well sick of these Playboy posts.
But a commitment is a commitment. I told myself I’d do all the Miss Novembers this November, and I am damned well going to. The fact that I’ve found my energy is flagging is all part of the experiment, and I need to see it as a challenge to my creativity to keep it poppin’ fresh for myself as I finish the month. I have only a few days left and something like ten or eleven more ladies to do, so let’s blow this up. Lovely and talented Ms. Lorraine Olivia, Playboy‘s Miss November 1990, won’t you please take it away for us?
You may guess what her day job was (flight attendant), but her hobby is sports. Besides being an avid athlete herself, she passionately avowed her love for the teams in Chicago, her home base.
In fact, in her Playmate interview, Ms. Olivia says that she used to ditch her high school jobs so frequently to go down to Wrigley to catch a Cubs game that she had to try and keep track of which excuses she had already used.
She started rooting for them during their big 1984 season; they were the cause of frequent no-shows at the car dealership and the pharmacy where she held jobs: “I always had to ask myself, Did I use that excuse last week?” (Note to future employers: Lorraine’s favorite excuse was that she had to “check out colleges.”) (“High Flier,” Playboy, November 1990.)
I can get behind that: quit your job and go on tour! Though I generally used to say this only in reference to what any musician with a day job ought to do, I have recently begun to apply it across the board in the general spirit of “follow your dreams.” As my brother-in-law says that my husband taught him, “Don’t follow the money and look for the love: do what you love and the money will follow.” This is interesting to me because, presently, my husband has not returned to finish his Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in painting despite our separation meaning that he has more free time, money, and less obligation than during our marriage and that there is therefore literally no time like the present to pursue his dreams — instead, he still works for the heartless banking corporation he got a job with after we got married and he deferred enrollment at his art school. I’m not sure why. I do not ask him difficult things until I think he is ready to talk about it.
In addition to modeling and appearing in Playboy videos (notably their “Women of Color” collections — oh, that PC prince of porn, Hugh Hefner; lord love him!), she has had one other acting part. She appeared in an episode of Fresh PRince of Bel-Air as “Playmate.” She clearly has a stunning range, and I hope you consider her for your next big part. Speaking of flicks:
FAVORITE IN-FLIGHT MOVIE: Fabulous Baker Boys.
WHAT THEY DON’T TEACH YOU IN STEWARDESS SCHOOL:
How to deal with five unaccompanied children who like to play with the call button.
CUTEST CHICAGO CUB:
Mike Bielecki.
Really, Bielecki? Was he super-cute back then? Hmm, let’s find an old card and take a little look-see, shall we?
Yes. Bielecki cuteness affirmative. I approve. Love me some cornfed baseball-boy hotness. Speaking of which, Ms. Olivia, if you are ever giving yourself the ol’ googly-moogly and run across my blog, please give me a holler in re: current Cubby Mike Fontenot, because, just personally? I believe him to be the beginning and end of all tiny but mighty strawberry-towheaded heat and possibly an alternate source of energy whose adorableness could power the nation’s ballpark lights well in to the 2020s. Your thoughts?
Please, Mike Fontenot, don’t hurt ’em. They call him Little Big Man. He is the BOMB!
And your man Ryan Thierot is nothing to sneeze at, either! On the other hand, you may keep Alfonso Soriano, and may you have better luck with him than my team did. He still holds the Yankee record for most strikeouts in a season evah (157) — a dubious honor if I ever heard one.
Playboy’s Miss November 1976, the lovely and talented Patti McGuire, was also Playmate of the Year in 1977, and is famous in the Playboy world for two things; first, for being being to Hef’s right/the viewer’s left on the Playboy Pinball Machine backglass, and second, for being the cover model and centerfold in the issue where Jimmy Carter was interviewed.
It is the only issue in the history of the magazine to feature an interview with a presidential candidate — and of course, after only being on the stands about a week, he won the election. So now it is the only issue with a president interviewed in its pages. In the course of his profile and interview with Robert Scheer, Carter admitted,
“I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.”
a remark that has haunted his political career as jeers from the shadows which kind of besmirch all the awesome charity work he and his wife do with Habitat for Humanity. Yes, because he is the only person ever to have windowshopped. I think it is admirable he was open and humble about it. Excuse a dude for being honest.
Patti McGuire had some opinions about fidelity and affairs as well, but they were not quite in the same spirit of confession, self-improvement, and the difficulty of faithful loving as President Carter’s:
In discussing relationships, she admitted that she believed in a “reverse double” standard. She wanted to be free to explore casual affairs, but her man had to be faithful. Could she be more specific?
“Well, have you ever seen the original uncut version of King Kong? When Kong first meets Fay Wray, he peels off her clothes, fondles her and then sniffs his fingers. Later, when he’s climbing the Empire State Building, he reaches through a window and grabs a blonde. He sniffs her and, realizing that she is not his beloved, casually tosses her some 50 stories to her death. That’s my idea of a faithful lover.” (“Missouri Breaker,” Playboy, November 1976)
Patti married tennis star Jimmy Connors in 1978 and they are still together, so apparently he either cured her double standard or overlooks it. They have two children, according to the wiki. No word on if he ever threw anyone off a building for her, but obviously he is doing something right if they’ve been married thirty-one years.
Patti at the 2009 Chicago Glamourcon with the Bally’s Pinball Machine backglass
These days, Patti travels and does public appearances with other playmates, and devotes her time to her husband and children. In the above picture, she is at the Chicago Glamourcon in 2009, posing with the famous Pinball Machine. She was recently featured on a site called goodplasticsurgery.com, who pointed out that her face still looks like her own, despite that, given her age, she has probably had light work done. I agree. She’s looking well. I think it’s because she’s lived a good, happy life. What more can any of us ask for!
The Thought Experiment 