Why do I love Playboy? A post I’ve thought about for weeks but didn’t know how to go about…
I don’t have a subscription to Playboy. I haven’t read the articles (despite being told by anxious men how good they are), and I couldn’t tell you much about the history of the magazine. As Playboy fans go, I’m not a devotee. In fact, I used to look at that pert bunny symbol and think, “Ugh, trashy!” I used to think the girls that idolized Playmates were blonde bimbos and the men who got a hard-on for those fake titted wonders were misogynistic trailer trash.
How wrong I was.
Doorman and Amazon Goddess have an obsession with it – Doorman did their whole bedroom in bunny gear, complete with canvas wall hangings of AG’s favorite Playmates. They had a bunny clock, a bunny lava lamp, a bunny blanket, and the bathroom is done up in pictures of The Girls Next Door frolicking around the Grotto.
I’m sure I grimaced the first time I saw their room. But then I got curious – the photos were sexy, and more erotic than pornographic, and these three ‘girlfriends’ of Hugh Hefner’s were in a romantic and sexual situation that most vanilla lovers can’t handle. How did it work? I had to know!
I watched every single episode of The Girls Next Door that I could get my hands on. The show is addictive, to say the least. But it lacked something. Where were the bunny outfits? Except for one or two episodes where the girls did a special presentation for the troops, most of the time they were bouncing around the Mansion in bunny sweats or going out on the town with Hef in sexy cocktail dresses.
I needed the explanation of bunny suits to understand my new pull to Playboy. The models rarely wear them in the magazine but they are such a blatant image of the brand name. They were classic, tailored to a T, and so sultry. They weren’t the symbol of a white trash decal stuck on someone’s car, but instead those little costumes seemed to be flavored with James Bond mystery, dripping with high-lifestyle Vegas class, and whispering seductively, “Here is your drink, sir.” Where the hell did they play in to this sexual revolution that was Playboy Magazine?
1960 – the first Playboy club opens in Chicago. The girls are dressed in the freshly designed bunny suit – satin bodices, cufflinks and ties, and the flirty bunny ears and tail which would soon become legendary. True to Hefner’s ideal woman, the suits were made only in 34D and 36D.
As a waitress/cocktail server myself, I found this next bit of history extraordinarily enticing – the girls are given a manual and “Bunny Training” on how to be a proper Playboy Bunny. Everything from how to act with men to how to carry your tray (there is a special Bunny Dip which I painstakingly learned how to properly in order to serve drinks at the bar). It was the suave 60’s sexy – alluring, but strangely innocent in the untouchable nature of the Bunny. And who doesn’t want to be a Bond girl? The Keyholder rules of the club offered a clientele who were usually debonair, the old-style gentleman you rarely see anymore. The girls were all different, from blondes to brunettes, but all of them were perfect because they were Bunnies.
This was what won me over fully as a Playboy fan. Yes, the practices of the magazine are a little shady (rumors of how Playmates get to be Playmates are sleazy) and rarely feminist-friendly. The strange accounts of what happen in Hefner’s bedroom are a little frightening. Maybe the ideal of beauty shown isn’t your average woman. But what I wouldn’t give to be one of those club Bunnies! The black nylon stockings, the trim little heels… Everything about that costume is a hint to sex and I love sex. It’s more understated than the nude centerfolds and it’s more overstated than any other cocktail waitress, well, anywhere.
Discovering the history of the clubs was a task that took me hours. It was like I was researching a term paper, except that I was drinking the information in like a dirty martini. After that, I got it. I found satin Playboy sheets and a gray Playboy throw. I bought a Playboy overnight bag for travelling and won a Playboy flask at a gift exchange party. The symbol was no longer ‘dirty’ to me, but instead, a real sign of something sexy, a throw-back to the decades old image of the coy cocktail girls Hefner shaped into a national desire.
That is why I love Playboy. If I could work at the new Playboy Club in Vegas… I would be a very happy Coquitten.
In the late 60s and early 70s I was married to a bunny who was at both the Chicago club and the Chicago Mansion, she was 36C. We played with a mutual college friend who was a Baltimore bunny at 34 B. I don’t think the girl in blue above is a D, although she is attractive.
A club bunny was a waitress, nothing more, although if she indicated she wasn’t averse to it, she would end up with tables that would tip very well for after hours services.
At the mansion I don’t recall my wife was ever assigned to anyone, but she was expected to be available. If in civilian dress she was expected in skirt, no panties, and to stand over the grotto, which had a transparent ceiling. Of course she might be in the grotto.
Obviously women who were all sizes were Bunnies, but the original bunny outfits were made in those two sizes (I recall reading how most women had to stuff, stuff, stuff!).
The appeal is that I am a waitress right now. I like my job, but waitressing as a Bunny would be way more fun!
Oh man my man hating feminist is so on. Hell I’m even wearing plaid flannel today. No shit. Still, I kind of get what you’re saying in the throw back to other times sort of way. Hefner is just such a scum bag.
to be fair the plaid flannel could just be the Canadian in me.