NAKED TRUTHS
I am a 22-year-old U.C.L.A. graduate and a feminist. I also happen to be currently employed as a Bunny at the Century City Playboy Club. In 1981, two pictures of me nude appeared in Playboy magazine’s “California Girls” pictorial.
I found your three-part series on female nudity to be a highly distorted and completely one-sided view of what it is like to pose naked or wear a cotton-tail.
Unlike the women KABC’s David Viscott describes, I do hope to one day “make it to the top” in a demanding field where looks don’t count as much as brains and performance. My goal is to become a broadcast journalist doing hard news.
So why then, if I am not desperately insecure or mindlessly brainwashed by Hugh Hefner, as your article suggests, did I pose nude and accept a job as a Bunny?
The answer is very simple. I do not believe there is anything wrong with nudity. The body, male and female, is a beautiful and fascinating creation. I am pleased that magazines like Playboy and Playgirl make it possible for bodies to be seen unclothed. The reason they are so popular is not because confused, insecure people buy them, but rather because it is perfectly natural to enjoy the beauty of the human figure.
The mere existence of Playgirl magazine shows that, contrary to your feeling that the “gap between the nation’s skin magazines has only widened in the ensuing (last) 16 months,” quite the opposite is the case.
The creation of places like Chippindales, magazines like Playgirl and waiters dressed as rabbits shows that it is slowly becoming more acceptable for men to reveal the sexuality of their bodies, and the women I know are grateful.
It is people like you who are abusing women, rather than Playboy, when you paint a picture of them as narcissists driven by a “deep need” for attention at any cost.
You too have “exploited” the women discussed in your stories by using their names and pictures for your own purposes. At least Playboy paid them for this privilege, which is something I’m sure you did not.
SHERIANN GLASS
Los Angeles