Playboy Opens Hunt at Women’s Colleges to Disprove Prudish Myth

Playboy magazine began a first-ever search today for women’s college students willing to pose for a spring pictorial, saying it will investigate a myth that the schools cater to short-haired “dyed-in-the-wool feminists.”

The Chicago-based magazine sent a crew to Boston for a week of interviewing and photographing students and alumni from all-women colleges in the area.

“The idea was something we have heard from our readers, saying that we go off to coed universities and find young women there, but how about the myth about women’s schools,” said Jeff Cohen, Playboy’s managing photo editor.

“Is it true they all wear short hair? Are they all dyed-in-the-wool feminists? We decided, ‘Well, let’s see what happens,’ ” he said.

The magazine targeted Boston because of the many women’s colleges in the area. It also said it will interview candidates from colleges that only recently began accepting male students.

Interested women from Elms, Emmanuel, Mt. Holyoke, Pine Manor, Regis, Simmons, Smith, Wellesley, Wheaton and Wheelock colleges were asked to interview and pose for photographs. The pictures will be reviewed later to determine which models will be used in the April, 1991, issue.

Applicants from the nation’s other women’s colleges were asked to mail in their pictures, he said.

The spring issue will depict women fully clothed, partially clothed and nude, with models allowed to choose their preference, Cohen said.

Heidi Ellis, a 1986 graduate of Mills College in Oakland, has already been selected to appear in the issue.