We had to wear regulation pantyhose called “support hose” purchased from a medical-supply drugstore. They were made of extra-thick nylon that hugged your skin so tightly it felt like wearing them would cut off all blood flow to your legs and your feet would go numb. Over the top of those, we had to wear a thin, sheer black hose that created the appearance it was all we really had on. But the magic was all in the support hose, which truly covered a multitude of sins: any hint of cellulite would disappear, as would slightly flabby inner thighs and any other imperfection.
That was the first order of dressing: we would start nude, pour ourselves into the sausage casing known as support hose, roll on the black sheer pantyhose, and then wriggle ourselves into the torture corset known as the famous Bunny costume, essentially a patch of fabric just large enough to hold a network of metal “bones,” eye hooks, and a zipper.
Once halfway into it, we would limp over to the seamstresses who would help us engage in a contortionist act worthy of inclusion in Cirque du Soleil. I can still do it in my sleep: you take a little breath, suck your stomach in for all you’re worth, and then grit your teeth and hold your breath while the seamstress stands behind you, yanking up the costume until your crotch burns from the friction, and then she zips you up from the base of your butt to the shoulder blades, cinching in everything until the zipper threatens to pop from the pressure.
The bones of the corset would bite into your flesh, molding you and your organs into the Playboy ideal.
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The bones of the corset would bite into your flesh, molding you and your organs into the Playboy ideal: waspish waist, achieved by redistributing all the extras known as internal organs, fat, bones, and skin and channeling it all towards the top of the costume where you quick zip it up, and it all spills over and is made to look like “cleavage.” A trompe l’oeil!
Once the seamstresses had you in, which could take a full minute or two, then the “rearrange” would happen. They’d reach their cold hands down into the top of your costume, feel around for where your breasts were hiding and then pull them up until they nestled into the molded cups. Next, the seamstresses would take a pair or two of rolled-up stockings in a ball and use them to pad underneath each of your breasts. If one pair wasn’t enough, they’d just keep stuffing. When you were as “stuffed” as the molded cups could hold, the seamstresses would command you to take another breath in, and they’d close the eye-hook in the back of the Bunny suit. That cinched everything. Scarlett O’Hara had nothing on us!
I am convinced Victoria’s Secret must have borrowed their, um, “secrets” from the early Playboy Club. Anyone who’s been in their stores has witnessed the foam padding of cups in everything, from bathing suits to workout bras to the lacier lingerie-type bras that are growing thicker and more cleverly concealed inside the garments with every new season.
The finishing touch was standing in front of a full-length mirror with a seamstress standing behind you, having a final look and making any adjustments to your breasts so they pillowed up over the top of the very tightly fitting costume while ensuring that your nipples were tucked safely just inside the top edge of the costume. If you could still breathe, you were set to get a fresh tail hooked onto your backside by the seamstress. From there, you’d get your ears perched on your head and a fresh set of Playboy-logo cuffs wrapped onto your wrists.
I hated the corset routine even from the first days of training. I was 17, and it was the 1970s. Cockroaches or corsets? Which would you have chosen? I had auditioned as a 17-year-old and worked my first day inside the Playboy Club weeks later when I turned 18. I didn’t know much.
◊♦◊
Although I never broke the rule about not dating the customers, I did accept the flattery, and later, favors bestowed on me by a very senior-ranking executive of the Playboy empire. He would come in from London and invite me out to dinners and parties with him. From there, we’d go dancing at Regine’s with his other favorite Bunny. She and I became fast friends on our jaunts about town with the Important Man, as we called him.
Once a Playmate of a prior year was brought in as a special guest. She had flown in and needed a spot in the Club to stash her beauty tools. The Bunny Mother assigned her the empty locker next to mine. The air in our dressing room was charged with the excitement of meeting one of the real Playmates—in person! Later on, as I watched the Playmate emerge from her shower, sit down next to me, and begin her primping for the evening’s festivities, I was struck by how absolutely human she looked to me.
Was she pretty? Sure she was. But was she in possession of otherworldly perfection? Not even close.
While on break that day, I flipped through the ever-ubiquitous stacks of Playboy magazines in our employee lounge and found the older issue in which she had “starred.” As I studied her photos, I was struck with the magic that computers could generate. In front of me was sprawled virtual perfection, not a flaw in sight, her skin pore-less, tawny, with the texture of velvet. Her eyes were sparkling and bright. Her lips perfectly moist, parted ever so slightly to show off her perfect, non-rejecting smile.
Her body was portrayed in much the same way: all good features were highlighted to the extreme, and the less than perfect were “corrected,” which is to say, rendered invisible.
Today, with even grade-school kids adept at using Photoshop, none of this would be considered revelatory. To me, in 1978, well before home computers existed, I was dropped headfirst into the duplicitous world of visual trickery. I had seen behind the Wizard’s curtain, and I was stunned.
To me, in 1978, well before home computers, I was dropped headfirst into the duplicitous world of visual trickery. I had seen behind the Wizard’s curtain, and I was stunned.
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To be sure, the centerfold woman was pretty. But in truth, so was the woman who sold me my New York Times in the morning. So was my aunt, and so was my boyfriend’s sister, for that matter. Jeez, most women were attractive if you could just see them outside of the narrow rules, and yet it seemed that Playboy had extolled some illusory woman as the absolute gold standard for perfection.
Except the centerfolds weren’t perfect, and neither were we, and neither was anyone else. When the other Bunnies would sit around after work at the Blarney Stone having drinks, we were real girls in real bodies that had real problems. We fought with our boyfriends, we had bad breath in the mornings like everyone else, we got frustrated waiting in line at the bank, and we thought John the bartender poured stingy drinks. We were human! Even my boyfriend, once enamored with all things Playboy, was disillusioned once he started hanging out with my new Bunny friends. At first, he was a bit crestfallen that they were all so, well, normal. Then I think he enjoyed the freedom in knowing that.
◊♦◊
At the same time, deep resentments were fomenting in me against the men who created and perpetuated all this artificiality. Paradoxically, I judged every woman I passed on the street, using my Playboy-determined metric to decide her place in the female pecking order. It was like a compulsion, something I couldn’t choose not to do, even when it angered me that I so reflexively engaged in it. Inside me was a critic who applied Playboy’s measurements to every woman in the world.
More and more, my circle of friends reflected my ever-shallower values. I chose only the very prettiest Bunnies to socialize with, going to all the places the rich men were who would take notice of us and send us drinks. And I stopped wanting to be out in public with my non-Bunny friends who weren’t particularly attractive. I was getting a thorough training at work in just how much looks mattered if you were female.
Secretly I’d started developing not-so-wonderful feelings for the men who came into the Playmate Bar alone and sat nursing their scotch while allowing themselves to be full-on mesmerized by the larger-than-life illuminated photos of Playmates past.
My nascent anger at the artifice I saw all around me, all of which was being overridden and even celebrated by the men, caused me to unknowingly join in it even more than I could have seen, given that I was too immersed in it all to have had the perspective to question it.
Because I’ve walked those same roads myself and commodified my own sexuality, I understand the Heidi Montags and the Kim Kardashians. Only these gals are entire commodification industries. That young women are making the same mistakes with even more commercialization now makes me very sad.
My nascent anger at the artifice I saw all around me, all of which was being overridden and even celebrated by the men, caused me to unknowingly join in it even more than I could have seen, given that I was too immersed in it all to have had the perspective to question it.
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◊♦◊
The second time I worked as the Door Bunny, basically a glorified “greeter,” a large mob of angry women protesters stormed the front of the Club. Literally.
Carrying picket signs with their Women Against Pornography (WAP) logos emblazoned, the protesters would hurl themselves against the glass panels that made up the front of our building, chanting that Playboy was a bunch of male chauvinist pigs exploiting women and they needed to STOP! Over and over again, they’d throw themselves against the building till the glass panels shook, frightening everyone inside.
Terribly alarmed, I phoned upstairs to a manager about the disruption, but no one dared go outside to speak with the WAP, so the protesters would get out their bullhorns and turn up the heat, leading chants about the abuses of pornography and sexism. I still remember their poster of Larry Flynt’s Hustler magazine, which showed a naked woman’s torso being fed into a manual meat grinder. Horrifying. Were those pictures actual covers of magazines?
My god, these women were enraged! What was going on here?
Were they just jealous of us because we Bunnies “had it” and they didn’t?
When the Playboy Club would finally call the police, the protesters would have to be dragged off, sometimes handcuffed, and always yelling and kicking. I recall being so upset a few times that I cried as I saw them enact this intense fury I didn’t yet understand, but which terrified me.
They started to show up en masse The WAP protests became a regular event there. Customers were hectored on their way inside and would often have to fight their way in. I started wondering whether these women thought their husbands were inside, if that was why they were so angry. I wouldn’t have wanted my husband to be hanging out in here. Having those kinds of contradictory realizations was difficult to parse, so I shoved them aside, and using inebriants certainly helped.
Because as “liberated” as we Bunnies tried to appear, trying to live up to Hef’s Playboy paradigm of sexy girls helping men feel empowered to live out the full smorgasbord of their sexuality, I did feel sad whenever I saw men come in wearing wedding bands, as bourgeois as that perhaps sounds. Sure, couples often came in for shows, dinner, and drinks. But at least that didn’t feel as much like the men were cheating, lusting after other women while the wife stayed home and put the kids to bed. It was when married men came in alone or in groups of other men that disturbed me. At Christmastime, I received plenty of gifts—including a diamond necklace—from married customers who professed to being my ardent fans.
When couples came in, I wondered why a woman would show up in a men’s club acting like it was normal. I wondered whether they had sold out their wish to be a man’s one and only, all to appear “cool,” nodding consent to the appetites of the male animal.
Of course, intellectually I understood that the Club had good shows, but then, so did plenty of other venues in town that didn’t feature nude panels of centerfolds or service given by half-dressed girls with trussed-up bodies.
My internal criticism of the females our customers brought with them reflected my secret longing for a special kind of man: one who would forbid me from working here, who would tell me he couldn’t share me with another man, not even visually. I wanted him to think me nobler than participating in this fleshfest, so good and true that I was worthy of inspiring his true affection and his fidelity behind it.
I fantasized that such a man existed and would save me from this world of dualities I, with my inchoate 18-year-old consciousness, couldn’t comprehend. Of course, I could never meet that man in the Playboy Club. No, he’d have to come from elsewhere. No man of mine would be in here. I hadn’t yet figured out how to extricate myself from this scene; that would take a lifetime and be a work in progress. It took becoming involved for years with a man who wanted to marry me (but who I found out had a secret porn/sex addiction) that forced me to think through all this critically. But I digress …
◊♦◊
If you were wondering what it was really like to work at Playboy given all the General Manager’s rules for us, I’ll tell you. Working there was actually a really good job, as glorified waitressing goes. We were protected by our union, we were guaranteed tips (included on every customer’s bill), and we were allowed to bid our work schedules based on seniority, always a fair rule, I think. We had health insurance. Working there felt corporate, which it was. And there was absolutely no sex going on anywhere in the Club. None. If anything, the environment was antiseptically clean, much more so than most jobs I’ve held.
The intense scrutiny was also underscored right then, in part because Hefner had applied for a gaming license to open a Playboy casino down in Atlantic City and was nervously awaiting all kinds of surprise inspections. Therefore, every employee of his was held to rigorously high standards of conduct. And there were “Shoppers,” spies hired by his office to pose as customers and take note of our behavior in the Club. If anything was “off,” we would be written up. Knowing that spies lurked everywhere just waiting to nab us on an infraction, we were on our best behavior at all times. Sure, we snuck drinks sometimes, but we were ultra-careful about it—that’s how many watchdogs there were protecting the Playboy name and image.
If anything, Hefner’s proposed new TV series will have to fabricate some serious antics to provide a sexual hook. Working at a diner would probably have provided more salacious workplace stories.
◊♦◊
After working at Playboy for a few years, my rebellious nature landed me on the wrong side of the Bunny Mother. I got myself into trouble, and it was made clear to me that continuing to work in the New York Club would be difficult going. The only way out of it that I could see was to appeal to the Important Man for help getting myself out of this fix.
After crying to him that I really, really needed my job, he offered me two solutions: either work in the London Playboy Club or consider posing for the magazine. That, he said, would be lucrative and possibly open some doors for me, like modeling contracts and the like.
“You mean, um … nude?”
“Sure,” he said.
When I protested that my waist wasn’t small enough and my … he cut me off with a laugh and a reassurance that they could “fix that” in print.
“But I could never do that! Millions of men would see it and I …”
He seemed rather dismissive of the arguments I was having with myself.
I knew it was a horrible idea, but the prospect of making a lot of money wouldn’t let go of me. That, and the resolution to the impossible situation I had on my hands with trying to keep both my job and get on better terms with the Bunny Mother. Maybe I should pose. It would be fast. Next month, there’d be a new girl, and I’d be all but forgotten. Yes, that might work. Maybe I could manage to pose and hide behind the respectability of Playboy‘s reputation as a “gentleman’s magazine.” It’s not Penthouse, I kept telling myself.
But then visions of my father, a macho Mediterranean man, flashed before my eyes. I could see him walking through the mechanical engineering company he owned, and there on the wall, enshrined between the drafting tools and the hammers, would be an enlarged photograph of his only daughter, nude for all the world to see.
If there were a more terrifying thought in the universe, I don’t think I could imagine it.
Before I could change my mind again, I quickly told the Important Man I couldn’t do it. He simply shrugged and said, “Suit yourself.”
And so with no resolution to my dilemma with the Bunny Mother, I handed in my resignation and walked out of the Playboy Club forever.
Decades later, when the porn addict in my life tried to argue with me that porn stars are not exploited, that many of his favorite stars actually have their own sites, that they’re empowering themselves, I grew very quiet. Instead of arguing with him that no, no, I knew way better than that, I realized then that the smartest thing I ever did was not pose nude. My decision to pose would not have been retractable. It was like the stupid tattoo I got when I was 15, but even that could at least be concealed.
By not posing, I was free to marry a respectable man and have children who would never find out that Mommy posed for a pornographic magazine.
I could go to college and get the jobs I wanted and always hold my head up without fear of being found out.
Playboy gave me one of the best jobs I ever had, and allowed me one of the toughest but ultimately smartest decisions I ever made for myself. For that I am eternally grateful.
When I began working at the Playboy Club, all I wanted to learn was to plié in a burgundy bodysuit and toe shoes. Instead, I learned to Bunny Dip in a corset and heels. My life has had a number of surprising twists, a lot of therapy (mercifully), and an ever-deepening spirituality. I work with the spouses of sex/porn addicts—at www.posarc.com—which is about as full-circle as that 17 year-old could have ever imagined.
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hi Lili Bee ! i love reading your playboy bunny experience for i can relate with your story coz i was once also a local bunny in davao city, Phils. ” Exclusive 33″ , playboy club was opened in 1973 and was housed in maguindanao hotel. Members were composed of politicians and bigtime businessmen with common vices like gamblers, womanizers, and of course hard drinkers. Bunnies were from Manila which most of them were known “ bomba stars “ like Scarlet Revilla, Yvonne and among others. First, i was hired as a receptionist , but i was forced to work… Read more »
I am having trouble asking these questions in a way that doesn’t sound loaded, but what I want to ask is; Firstly, do you think that these clubs, and stripping/sex work in general, serve a useful purpose in giving women with very few options a way out of poverty, and does this justify the existence of playboy’s clubs. Or does it highlight how sick society in general is. Ie the problem is that there are people who are living in poverty. Secondly, was working in the club a good or a bad thing? From reading the article, it sounds like… Read more »
Great article! Thanks for shattering the glass of the Playboy Club and allowing us a look on the true ugly inside…I went with my husband to Le Lido in Paris for my 40th birthday….it was all about topless showgirls, many of them less than a C cup, and Las Vegas-like entertainment…my husband sneered that this was considered entertainment in France, but whatever,..it was interesting watching the audience: a group of giggly Japanese college students celebrating a birthday, French businessmen in pin-striped suits with their clients, older couples on a ritzy night out, and career girls in their 40’s taking in… Read more »
can we be freinds
Interesting little story here. When you worked there in NYC,did you ever work with,or meet Kathryn Leigh Scott?
Good to see things have worked out all right for you.
Barnabas Collins
Hi Barnabas….can’t say Kathryn’s name rings a bell. If she was a bunny, she might have been assigned a different bunny name. When hired, most of us had our names given to us. You could’ve come in with a perfectly fine name, like Patricia, but they mandated it be changed to Patti, with an “i”. Or if you were “Michelle”, they turned you into a “Mikki”….So cutesy. So non-threatening. So makes you sound like a 15-year old! I seriously wanted to puke that almost every girl I worked with was a “Sunni”, “Candi”, “Kerri”, “Barbi”, “Jessie”, Mandi,” “Brandi” and my… Read more »
I was a Playboy bunny from 1963 through 1966. Lily would never have made the cut. They sure must have lowered the standards. I was hired by Keith Hefner, as were all the bunnies. I only worked the Penthouse showroom. The slower bunnies were assigned the Playmate bar. Her story was far from accurate. To not even mention ( C-! ) keys is a huge omission. I attended many parties at the mansion in Chicago, and am still friends with many former bunnies and playmates ( they weren’t all airbrushed ) all over the country I have wonderful memories of… Read more »
It seems apparent that different clubs went by different rules, and that likely, those rules also changed over time. For the record: There WAS no Penthouse showroom in the NYC Club in the late 70’s. Probably because Hefner wasn’t stupid enough to name anything in his club after his biggest rival’s magazine! (Bob Guccione/ Penthouse magazine). Secondly, Bunnies at the NYC Club in the 70’s were never, ever assigned to any room, station or post in the Club by management. We were always allowed to select our OWN rooms to work in, based exclusively on our seniority. Whichever room and… Read more »
Gee Russi its really hard to compare things that happened over 45 years ago as most corporations change their style and protocols to reflect the times they’re in. Ancient history is just that – I’m sure that gals who worked at the Playboy Club towards the end years and/or in different cities might have had different rules and regulations from when Lilli Bee worked there. It’s fascinating that you’ve taken Lili’s story so personally which is probably more of a reflection of you than anything else. How nice that you have fond memories of your time at the Playboy Club… Read more »
Wow. What a response to this amazing, vulnerable article. Defensive and missing the point, much?
THANK YOU for this honest piece…. I AM the wife of one of the types of men you wrote about– the men who would come in while their wives were tending the home. I can tell you that while I’m sure the male fascination with the female form begins in curiosity, it so often leads to addiction since sex affects the reward systems in the brain the same way that drugs or food can. My husband’s porn addiction now has threatened our marriage and I find myself wondering how long, or even IF I want to stay. Porn is NOT… Read more »
This post has been XX Factored!
Something of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s kept tugging at me, when I read this piece, which felt so poignant to me. I didn’t want the story to end; it was like I was drinking a cool, refreshing glass of water after being parched all day… I noticed your website mentions you have a book coming out on your relationship with a porn/sex addict….when will the book be ready? If it’s anything as good as this article, please sign me up. I want more. I am admittedly from the generation that came of age sexually before there was Internet… Read more »
Thank you, Mary and all who’ve written….Yes, my book is entering the completion phase; thank you for inquiring…and you’re absolutely right, we need to start paying serious attention to the affects of pornography on our kids. That we don’t as a culture strikes me as tragic.
How do you equate being a Playboy bunny to pornography? Read my comment posted 7/20/11
I was touched by the candid story that could have been anyone, we ALL have a story. As I read through the responses, it occurred to me that we all are wounded in some way, and our wounds are the filters of our perception and inform our reactions to our experience. Your wounds are different than my wounds, your perceptions and experience are different than mine, but all of our Needs are basically the same; to be loved and accepted, and to love…Everything comes from Love, even the wounds. Isn’t it grand that there are SO many facets to the… Read more »
WTF!!!!!!!
My posting is actually regarding the website’s system for rating comments. I think it’s unfair to hide comments “due to a low comment rating.” Unless you’re shielding the audience from profanity or something objectionable, I think readers are adults enough to handle the opinions of others. I dislike this type of censorship.
Erin, Yes, my question was rather categorical. There are ultimately many more shades of grey amongst men and women than a simple differentiation between “good” and “bad”. Your statement that men are able to compartmentalize their sexual attraction is a fair generalization (for the most part true, but I know men and women who don’t fit into that generalization). I can also see how you would interpret my statement about never having the chance at intimacy with a Playboy Bunny as elevating fantasy women over real women. But I actually meant the opposite. Fantasy women are simply a poor imitation… Read more »
I agree that there are many different shades of grey but it’s hard to talk about any issue while addressing all shades of grey. Most of my comments are general statements and there will be many people they don’t apply to. It’s not just a male ablility to “compartmentalize”. My own perception is that men pride themselves on their ablity to compartmentalize. But when you are a woman, in a relationship with a man, it is not a positive to be compartmentalized. We don’t want to be put into a box only to be taken out to play when it… Read more »
Hi Erin,
Real women are much better than fantasy women.
Hank
This was a very interesting and thought provoking article. I’m deeply sorry that due to circumstances of poverty you became involved with an abusive man (albeit well intentioned). Violence against women is never acceptable and the passages where you described Mark’s abusiveness caused me some gender self loathing. However, I have to admit that I find Playboy Bunnies attractive. I’m not sure if it’s because of mass media or male biochemistry, but large boobs plus little clothing equals lust. I can rationalize with myself, and I understand that the Playboy Bunny is simply a cliche of female sexuality. Real women… Read more »
t’s not a black and white question Matthew. It doesn’t necessarily make a man “bad” or “incapable of establishing a meaningful intimate relationship”. But I do think it puts conformity and boundaries on how he views women and naturally how he views his opposite sex partner and the level of intimacy he is really achieving with his partner. I am not saying that he can’t love his partner and find Playboy Bunnies attractive. But if he splits his attention between the two, if he has a standard in his fantasy world vs his real life partner who just isn’t that… Read more »
What an honest, wonderfully intimate, thoughtful article. Thank you for sharing your experience Lili. It goes to show how much disconnect there is between what the reality is vs what the fantasy. And even if men logicaly know something is fantasy, fake, not real; they can still be enamored with it. How many men sold out themselves and their own partners in that time to enjoy Playmates and the likes of that? How many men today sell out themselves and their partners for that same fantasy image? Too many. How many women have to pay for ideals set up about… Read more »
Well thanks Terre, but fortunately, you do not speak for all women, let alone this woman. There exists as much of a “business” controlling pornography as there are those perpetuating it, and in the same vein, there are charlatans in the self-help space as there are pornographers who manipulate and abuse. Life is complex and full of nuances that betray conservative thought patterns. I mean seriously – do you really think anyone is going to abandon the complex societal decisions of sexuality and pornography to religious ministers?
Great point about the hucksters and charlatans in the New Age/self-help movement, Elissa. I agree wholeheartedly. Yet, without consumers, the porn industry would have no one to pander to. Starting with fathers of little girls, brothers of teenaged girls and any male with a young girl in their lives seemed a pretty good place to begin the appeal. I am a little uncertain about the question you posed about ministers being in charge of sexuality. I do not see where that came from. I refused to let the Catholic church determine one iota of those realms for me and would… Read more »
I understand these segments are opinion pieces, but unless otherwise explicitly stated, I view opinion pieces as proxy wishes for “If I were Queen, this is what I would want to happen….” The author of this piece describes herself as an interfaith minister. Hopefully I read that correctly on her website. You are also listed as a contributing member. I’m not casting dispersion, I want to be clear that you both represent a particular point of view, and if I were to invite different points of view to contribute to this discussion, then a better balance would be struck, and… Read more »
“There exists as much of a “business” controlling pornography as there are those perpetuating it, and in the same vein, there are charlatans in the self-help space as there are pornographers who manipulate and abuse. Life is complex and full of nuances that betray conservative thought patterns. I mean seriously – do you really think anyone is going to abandon the complex societal decisions of sexuality and pornography to religious ministers?” I sincerely hope not, Elissa….I’ve never had the goal of hoping people abandon, as you say, the complex societal decisions of sexuality and pornography to a religious minister…. While… Read more »
Oh, SnakeEyez, it is not necessary for women to reduplicate men’s mistakes to “equalize” anything. Increasing porn for women as a solution for the power differential between men and women is as silly as insisting that men wear a girdles to level the playing field.
Women and men will make their own mistakes in the search for equality and intimacy. Identical mistakes are not equality, it is blindness.
So, no thank you to your offer of more porn for women.
How many of you came to read the article Lili wrote because you saw “playboy bunny” in the article title? For me…I came via a friend who had posted the link on her facebook page telling her friends they should read the article. So, I did. Obviously, a daughter who’s run away countless times and finally able to emancipate from her family…there’s a story there that we don’t see what caused it to occur, but we see the end results. In this case – with a family she couldn’t count on or live with, she chose sleeping without a roof…then… Read more »
Jake, please help men realize that all porn performers (and many, many of them are performing against their wishes) are some father’s little girls. No little girl dreams of being a porn performer (or sex worker) when she was a little girl. Doing so is always, always a barter to exist in this world, providing safety of some sort or validation that was painfully missing. Bluntly put, NO little girl requests bunny ears and a dildo for her fifth birthday. Tell other men that your little girl will never need to sell herself to survive. Even if her real father… Read more »
This story has agitated a deep wound in our culture, which some of us can see and feel, are able to heal, and that some of us simply are repelled from. This issue is concerning the wedge that has been driven into the heart of intimacy by porn, sexy clubs and the general sleazy angle that our media has taken and floods us with at every turn. Entire generations seem to be growing old without ever knowing true intimacy, which is being kept alive (like a flickering flame) by so few today. Pro-Intimacy is far from being Anti-Sex. Quite the… Read more »
I am such a fan of Lili! Not just because of this article but because I have gotten a chance to hear other stories like this and I give her so much credit for becoming the kind thoughtful person she is. In all fairness I am a bit biased because I have known Lili almost 10 years and consider her a good friend. Lili, If youre reading this, I think you should write more stories about yourself perhaps even an auto biography because the playboy story is only scratching the surface of a lifetime of really fascinating stories. Good stuff,… Read more »
Wow! What a story of transformation from innocence and corporeal banality to wisdom. Congratulations Lili – you have given us all the hope of redeeming ourselves and our baser natures. At one time or another, we were all young, innocent and trying to survive, caught up in the “games” of fantasy and the need for love from something outside ourselves. Using it now in such a salubrious way to help others and serve is truly inspiring. Thank you.
In the movie, Star-80, about the poor playmate who was shot by her boyfriend, another SC pimp, it was clear that Hefner and Bogdonovich were essentially pimps also, just at a more expensive level. Pretty revealing.
Bogdanovich was a borderline pedophile, too. He became a father figure to the murdered Playmate’s little sister when she was 12, and married her when she turned 18. He was in his 40’s or 50’s. I saw an interview with him where he said that he was born to a teenage mother, so he only likes very young women. So gross.
First off, congratulations Lili for your courage and your core values at wanting to help others. This speaks for itself. It is so easy to see how any young girl in society could be pulled into the lure of Playboy or pornography, for it offers a fast track to fame and money, and at an age where most girls are given the choice of either a (corset or cockroaches,) as Lili mentions, I think the choice would be easy. But the chose is really in our hands, the elder society. We are the ones who have evolved and should have… Read more »
Did we even read the same article? Lilli’s issue wasn’t the lure of Playboy and pornography but rather crushing poverty! If anything Playboy was one of the positive influences in her life: she had a job that gave her the ability to get away from her exploitative boyfriend/pimp, she had health insurance (something that a lot of Americans don’t even have today) and she was working at a corporate job. Was it an ideal job, of course not but it was still a lot better than a lot of runaway teens have it today: she wasn’t forced into sex work,… Read more »
what I felt that this daring story captures is the struggle to survive in a disorienting and misguided society. The Western social structure has been held hostage to greedy, sadistic bastards for thousands of years. This has corrupted every basic need and intention which makes us human. We inherently know that we can return to a connected wholeness but lack a pure map. I applaud the founders of this website for attempting to create a healthy map of sorts, and by allowing us to share our thoughts and stories which may help us along our way. And to the brave… Read more »
Nice story. But somehow I think Mark should get the “Suitcase-Pimp-O’-The-Year” award…