♪♪
When people think about "Playboy,"
they think about those soft images.
That is part of this narrative that, like, Bunnies,
they're delicate. They're so pretty and soft.
♪
What people don't think about
is there's a judgment about the women who pose.
These women may not realize that a photograph
in "Playboy" follows you the rest of your life.
"Playboy" Magazine is placing an ad in campus newspapers
asking for models to appear in a special fall issue.
"Attention female student body,
ever fantasize about being pictured
in the number one men's magazine in the world?"
They want to know your weight, measurements, date of birth.
"Playboy" coming to campus and recruiting
for their pictorials of young college women
and the university allowing it.
That feels predatory.
♪
Posing as a coed really did impact my life.
♪♪
Being judged and bullied by people who didn't even know me--
that was the worst part.
Posing for "Playboy" has followed me to this day.
I was in situations where I said,
"I hope they don't find out."
A lifetime... [laughs] as a pariah
where something relatively minor was unjust.
When it comes to sex, women can't win.
[motor revving]
My name is Hugh Hefner.
I'm editor-publisher of "Playboy" magazine.
REPORTER: Playboy is one
of the most famous brand names in the world.
It was simply to include sex as
one natural part of a package for a male audience.
WOMAN: When I made the choice to do "Playboy,"
I didn't realize all the choices that I was making
that came with that choice.
WOMAN #2: We don't judge the men for buying the "Playboy"s,
but we judge the women for posing for "Playboy."
JILL: I was never Jill anymore.
I was Jill that posed for "Playboy."
WOMAN #3: I just gave in and knew that I was
probably gonna go to hell.
WOMAN #4 It got to a certain point
where it wasn't fun anymore.
SONDRA: This process was very painful,
but I should be able to tell my story as I lived it.
♪
"Playboy," in its portrayal of women's sexuality,
is undoubtedly serving
the desires and the fantasies of straight men.
And the celebration of coeds in the magazine is absolutely
a part of the entire vision of sexuality
and femininity that Hefner is promoting in "Playboy."
♪
The problem is, when you pose so young,
you're dealing with something very permanent
that is going to follow you around.
Women have had to pay consequences
for having appeared years ago.
My name is Michelle Mislevicek Gaines.
I appeared in the September 1984 issue
of "Playboy," "Girls of the Big Ten."
♪
I'm from Madison, Wisconsin.
I always wanted to go to the University of Wisconsin.
Was originally an economics/ political science major.
Intended to do government work, maybe international relations.
I was living with Ron, my fiancé at the time.
Our wedding was set for the summer of 1984.
He had a subscription to "Playboy."
And every month I had to hear
about how beautiful these women were,
how hot they were, how desirable they were.
I thought, "How can you not think that hurts me?"
I don't look anything like that.
And then literally, he and his friends talking
about, "Oh, yeah, she's got great boobs,
but--but the legs on the other one are..."
Just like they're comparing pieces of steak.
♪
I was already dealing with my warped pursuit
of a certain body type,
and Ron's interest in "Playboy" didn't help it.
I don't think anyone would have ever considered me overweight,
but I would burst into tears in front of a mirror.
And so I struggled
with body dysmorphia and anorexia.
I was very young. I had no confidence.
So, it was crushing. I still struggle with it.
I think that as much as "Playboy" for so long
was seen as the ideal beauty standard
for young women,
a specific issue is the fact that
with younger college age girls,
that it's entirely possible that
when they're making these choices to pose for "Playboy,"
they might not understand
the potential consequences of that choice.
Young women grow up feeling like,
"Oh, that's what I'm supposed to look like,
and if I don't look that way,
there's something wrong with me."
♪
I was sitting home on a Saturday evening,
and the local evening news came on.
They had a camera crew and a reporter
at the Concourse Hotel to cover "Playboy" auditioning
for "Girls of the Big Ten."
Ron said, "Think of it. It'd be an adventure."
So, the next day, I went to the audition down at the hotel.
I walked into the bedroom.
That's where the audition takes place.
David Chan, who was their famous "Girls of..." photographer,
welcomed me in, told me to shut the door behind me.
And then he said, "Take off your clothes."
♪
No get to know ya. No conversation.
Just, "Hello. Welcome. Take off your clothes."
I knew I was a prude, but still, I wasn't nervous.
I wasn't scared. I was mostly just curious.
And then he said, Get up on the dresser.
So I just hopped up on the dresser,
And he snapped, and it didn't take very long,
and they just said, "We'll let you know."
At that time, it was just all about having the experience
of auditioning and going on my merry way.
That evening, the phone rings, and it's David Chan.
He said, "We'd like you to be in the magazine.
We'd like to shoot tomorrow."
I cupped the phone. I said "Ron, it's--it's 'Playboy.'
It's David Chan. He-- He wants me to be in it."
He goes, "Tell him yes."
I said, "Okay."
So, I did not have any time to think about it.
The photo shoot took place in a frat house.
Two frat boys vacated their room for the day.
All the pics took place on their bunk bed,
and most of the shots, I was on all fours,
and David Chan would say,
"Now suck in your stomach.
Okay, suck in your stomach more than that.
Okay, now stick your butt out. Stick your butt out.
Okay, now turn your head toward me and smile."
And I said to him, "You contort yourself like this
and crack a smile."
And he said, "The object is to look so sexy
and so inviting so that men can have fantasies
that you're actually wanting them."
In that moment,
what hit me the most was the whole dichotomy.
You're supposed to project this hotness,
but you're also not supposed to be that kind of girl.
The positions were very bad-girlish.
That wasn't really me.
I liked the rock 'n' roll kind of look,
but there was a kind of sluttiness
that I didn't like.
At the time, I never thought anything about
what would happen when the magazine came out.
This magazine will probably exist somewhere
for a hundred years in a library,
and they'll be able to go there and look you up
in all your nubile glory.
It's their own decision. If--If they want to pose,
it shouldn't affect the school in any way.
REPORTER: Some, though, disagree.
It's totally degrading, you know, for the women.
I don't like "Playboy" Magazine.
I don't agree with the things that they have in it.
I think it's very sexist.
Um, I think it's a pretty good idea.
You know, there are plenty of pretty girls around here who,
if they want to show it, can, but I think the whole campus
might get a bad idea about that girl if she did.
♪
The expectations of beauty in "Playboy"
really focus on young women
in their late teens and into their 20s, right?
The sort of college years.
And the first "Girls of College" feature was in 1977,
and it featured the "Girls of the Big Ten."
And posing for "Playboy" in college can be transgressive.
It can be rebellious. It can be fun.
But at that age, we don't necessarily
understand the long-term consequences of our decisions,
because the problem is we still live in a culture
that judges women for their sexuality.
So, you're taking your clothes off in "Playboy."
A lot of people are gonna attach particular meaning
to your actions.
We don't judge the men for buying the "Playboy"s,
but we judge the women for posing for "Playboy."
The hypocrisy
and the double standard is stunning.
♪
At the time of the shoot, unbeknownst to me,
"Playboy" had sent 8x10 glossies
of my face and my unlisted telephone number
to the local newspapers.
So, a reporter called Sunny Schubert
from the "Wisconsin State Journal"
called and asked could we meet for coffee and do an interview?
Sunny and I met for coffee.
Then that Saturday, the article came out,
and it was so mean.
"Michelle Mislivicek, a real person,
not one of those plastic preppies."
And she's being, of course, facetious.
She's saying that I am very plastic,
but I really wasn't.
The whole gist was to make me look stupid,
to make me look vacuous.
I'm not bragging. I was just "known as one of the brainiacs."
And so, it was crushing to be painted as dumb.
After I posed for the magazine, I expected that hardly anybody
would see the picture, would notice that it was me.
But when the article
in the Saturday Feature section came out,
I knew that everyone in Dane County, Wisconsin,
is gonna know I was in "Playboy."
You couldn't miss my face. It was huge.
I thought to myself, two weeks from the appearance
of that feature article, Ron and I were getting married.
The minister called and said,
"I cannot marry you since your fiancée
took her clothes off and appeared in 'Playboy.'"
The magazine wasn't even out yet,
and now we have no one to perform the ceremony.
in the middle of peak wedding season.
The wire services picked up the news
that the pastor refused to do the ceremony.
So, we scrambled, and we were able to find a judge
that went around and did ceremonies.
♪♪
Then the magazine came out.
We got our subscription, and then I saw the picture.
♪♪
[pages rustling]
I've always been grateful
that I had that much covered
but been very uncomfortable with the pose.
Yeah, I guess it does...
It certainly reeks of subjugation. Yeah. Yeah.
♪
But I was happy that the picture was not totally nude
and that it was very small.
It's only this big by this big,
but something that small can make people go so crazy.
I was a receptionist for a local convenience store chain.
I went into work, and people were looking at me strange.
I was called into the president's office.
He said, "What you have done is disgracing our company."
I said, "You sell the magazine."
Firing me would be really hypocritical.
In the meantime, "Playboy" called
and said, the "Donahue Show" is interested in having you on.
I went there because I was very familiar with his show.
I knew Donahue was going to be on our side.
And the topic of the episode was,
"How much should religion interfere with your life?"
Um, Michelle, what do you say to those who say,
how can you possibly present yourself in that way
in a magazine of this kind and be a Christian, too?
Because I-I feel in my heart that Jesus wouldn't--
wouldn't sit in judgment of me for doing this.
The Bible was supposed to be the word of God.
Did God ever publicly condemn anyone?
He struck people dead for those things.
There was so much judgment, so much holier than thou.
I was judged, but in some ways I also judged myself.
I thought that posing in "Playboy"
would improve my body dysmorphic disorder,
but it didn't quite work out that way.
"Playboy" did exacerbate that illness.
That picture was just one day in my life.
And I wanted to keep that forever and ever.
And so, I was obsessed with the idea of wanting
to go back to my 102-pound self.
♪
I struggled with the not eating kind of anorexia
and the over-exercising kind of anorexia.
♪
My daughter--she's mostly learned from my dysfunction,
and she wanted to feel more comfortable in her own skin.
And she does, thank goodness.
♪♪
But I never thought posing in "Playboy"
when I was just a college student
would have all these consequences.
At the time that I was in the magazine,
I was a double major-- economics and political science.
I intended to do government work,
but after I appeared in the magazine,
I knew very soon,
life in politics or in government was over.
There were a lot of doors that I knew were shut then.
It did.
You know, no one likes to have choices taken away from them.
And I really wish I had been more savvy then
about knowing what kind of harm it was doing to women
and to women's self-esteem,
especially future forward
as somebody who was gonna be the mother of a daughter.
"Playboy" Magazine is placing an ad in campus newspapers
asking for models to appear in a special fall issue
featuring the "Women of the Atlantic Coast Conference."
The ad is creating quite a stir on ACC campuses.
Some outraged Chapel Hill women
are urging the other women on campus to ignore it.
"Playboy" was used to being protested against,
particularly by the late '60s,
when much of American culture was
being influenced by various protest movements.
So when the "Girls of College" issues emerged,
protest was already really prominent for "Playboy."
This is the Playboy ad that ran on March 7, 1998.
I was 19 years old, first year in college,
and I helped organize a protest against "Playboy" Magazine,
recruiting for models on UNC Chapel Hills campus.
♪
I was born in Madison, Wisconsin.
My family moved around a lot. We ended up in North Carolina,
and the decision to go to UNC was really easy.
It's a great school.
It was exciting to get to leave home and go live on my own.
♪
My first year of college,
I was the co-founder of A.S.A.P.--
Advocates for Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention.
♪
And me and a bunch of activists,
we wanted to put on this Women's Week,
and each day was gonna be devoted to, like,
Women's History Day, Women's Health Day,
which took place in March 1998.
We had a professor come from a university in Boston,
and she gave a slideshow on pornography,
basically about how
the sexist, violent images of women are harmful.
And the first image that I remember is an image
of a woman being fed into a meat grinder,
which was in "Hustler."
It's a spectrum.
"Playboy" is part of a larger machine
that promoted the commoditization
and objectification of women.
And the implication is that women are ready
and available for sex anytime.
So, I think "Playboy" definitely contributes to a rape culture.
♪♪
So, the professor showed a "Penthouse" spread
from December 1984
that showed Asian women hanging from trees
that were bound and gagged,
heads falling forward, possibly dead.
♪
The professor said
in 1985, a young girl, her name was Jean Fewel--
she's Asian, she was being adopted,
was kidnapped on her way to school,
and found bound and hanging from a tree,
just like the magazine right here in Chapel Hill.
She'd been sexually assaulted, and the person
who was ultimately convicted of her murder
was addicted to pornography and had been found to be
in an adult bookstore three days before that.
♪
Hearing the story of Jean, my friend burst into tears.
She is from Chapel Hill,
and she said, "Jean was my friend."
And, like, the trauma that I felt
radiating from her, like, I was just pissed.
Deeply personal issues really affected my way
of looking at the world and women in the media.
♪
I was the daughter of a single mother.
Also, I had some deeply traumatic things happen to me
when I was younger.
Yes, but not on campus.
When I was much younger.
It's an obvious question.
And I was like, Do I want to talk about that?
I don't know what else to...
say about the assault other than it happened,
and it...
You are forever part of a club
that no one wants to be a part of.
So, 19-year-old me,
I was just ready to stand up for what I believe in.
♪
And so when the slideshow was over, people were saying,
"What can we do? Like, how can we stop this?"
I raised my hand and I said,
"Actually, I just saw an ad in the student newspaper.
'Playboy' is recruiting for models.
And I said we could try to disrupt their photo shoot."
To be clear, it is a woman's choice to do
what she wants with her body.
This protest was not about the women who pose.
It was about "Playboy" Magazine
plus UNC's de facto endorsement of "Playboy."
♪
We tried to throw everything we could into this protest.
We took their ad, and we repurposed it.
This is our ad that says,
"Subvert 'Playboy' coming to Chapel Hill.
Attention, wo/men,
ever fantasized about realistic representations
of women in magazines?
Give 'Playboy' a piece of your mind,
not just a piece of your body."
So, then we decided we would get as
much negative publicity for "Playboy" as we possibly could.
And it was a community effort.
It was grad students. It was parents.
It was professors. Undergrads.
The day of the audition, we met on campus.
We were a group of probably 50.
And then we marched to the Carolina Inn,
where "Playboy" reps were coming to do interviews.
We had 21 minutes of silence for the 21 years
that "Playboy" had been printing pictorials of college women.
And we had signs that said,
"It's not funny. We're not Bunnies."
"The 'Playboy' Bunny brings rotten eggs."
♪♪
The cops came. We were not breaking any rules.
We were absolutely, like, legally allowed
to do what we were doing.
I wasn't intimidated by them.
♪
I gave an interview to the local news,
you know, said this thing about destroying women's autonomy
and all of these really big concepts.
I'm sick of violence against women.
I'm sick of sexual assault.
I'm sick of institutions that make that possible.
♪♪
After that interview...
[laughs] I had no idea what was about to happen.
♪
The day of the "Playboy" protest,
I gave an interview to the local news.
I didn't think anything of it.
And then that night, my friend Kevin--
he called me in my dorm room,
and he said, "Do you watch 'The Daily Show'?"
And I was like, "No, I don't even know what that is."
He's like, "Well, you need to watch it 'cause you were on it."
And I just couldn't believe it.
And of course, there's no playback at that point, right?
You didn't have DVR.
So my friend stayed up all night watching TV
and taped it, like the 5 a.m. rerun for me.
I watched it. I was so embarrassed.
What is the sound of one hand protesting?
[audience laughter]
"Playboy" Magazine, the only porno mag
that's okay to leave out when company's over...
-[laughter] -...is casting its nets
into the vast sea of barely legal boat show queens.
that is the American college system
in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Oddly, there were some protesters.
Also makes very unwarranted assumptions
about men and their sexuality,
showing a man as a dominator and a predator.
And so it's very disturbing.
Magazine agreed many of the protesters had valid points
about female exploitation and subjugation,
many of which will be addressed
in the upcoming "Hot Protesters of the ACC."
[laughter and applause]
I was mortified.
I wasn't expecting to get this guy who had all this power,
he has a huge platform, to, like, focus on me,
and mocking me.
I was mortified. I felt humiliated.
I felt like my image was used against me.
Yeah, they took my face,
and they superimposed it on the cover of "Playboy"
with the new caption, "Hot Protesters of the ACC."
I was naive. I didn't know that something that you say
in one news market could make it, you know,
all the way up to New York or L.A.,
and it really felt unfair.
It feels like bullying to take a young woman
who's speaking her mind about something
that's pretty serious and making a joke out of it.
I was 19 years old.
I was ashamed for years.
People brought it up to me, like strangers mentioned it.
It was hurtful.
Imagine, if you will, sitting down to your morning coffee,
turning on your home computer to read the day's newspaper.
Well, it's not as far-fetched as it may seem.
REPORTER: It spans the globe like a superhighway.
It is called Internet.
In 1981, only 213 computers were hooked to the Internet.
As the new year begins,
an estimated two and a half million computers
will be on the network,
serving as many as 20 million people.
In the mid to late '90s, the Internet is emerging,
and magazines like "Playboy" have to deal with that
and figure out how to exist within that space.
And so one of the things they started doing was a cyber club.
♪♪
So, you could have access online to images that were similar
to what "Playboy" had presented throughout its history.
But one of the things that's different is that when
a woman chooses to pose for the cyber club,
those images are available to virtually anyone, anytime.
And so the potential for negative consequences
or judgment just becomes that much more significant.
♪
I grew up in a small town about two hours northeast of Dallas.
I started fashion modeling when I was around 12.
There's a modeling school in Dallas.
and I went there and did a few of their courses,
and then I started shooting with some local photographers.
My first memory of "Playboy" is seeing "Girls Next Door."
Of course, when I saw the show
and the girls and the glamour and all that,
I definitely wanted to be a part of that whole shebang.
When I was 17,
around the time that I was going to college to be a teacher,
I started shooting with a photographer named Jose Luis,
and we started by doing some test shoots together.
He did a lot of, like, glamour shoots
with nude models and stuff.
So when I turned 18,
I told him that I wanted to do a nude shoot.
You know, the goal was "Playboy."
Then Jose called me one day and said,
"Hey, I've been doing some work for 'Playboy.'
Do you want to do a photo shoot?
Maybe we can do a photo submission
and see if they purchase it."
So, that was my first "Playboy" shoot,
and I was really excited for it.
When Jose called me and told me that they had purchased
the submission to put it on Playboy Plus,
the online version of Playboy,
I think initially I was so in shock.
I didn't really have any feelings. I was just like, wow.
♪
This was from my first shoot with "Playboy."
When I logged in and saw myself on Playboy Plus,
I was very proud.
And then pretty soon after that,
I did a couple more shoots for Playboy Plus.
I felt great. [laughs] It was super exciting. Yeah.
But I had no idea that because I had posed in college,
things were going to get crazy.
♪
This one's one of my favorites. It's a little blurry.
At the time I posed for Playboy Plus in college,
I was really excited to be a part of it.
♪
When my various shoots came out,
I definitely posted a lot of the pictures on social media.
♪♪
All my friends and classmates knew that I had done "Playboy,"
and people were happy for me.
Honestly, I think that one of the reasons why in college
I wanted to model and do "Playboy" so bad
is because I was bullied in high school for my acne.
So, you know, after all those years of not fitting in
and just not feeling so great about myself
to have such a positive response online...
it felt nice.
[mouse clicks]
♪
So, I posed for "Playboy" as a coed,
graduated with my degree at 20, and then at 21,
I got hired at a magnet school in Dallas,
close to downtown,
to teach high school Spanish grades nine through 12.
♪
Before I started teaching,
in the back of my mind, I was always thinking, like,
you know, I did do "Playboy,"
and I don't want these kids to find out.
So, I went to thrift shops, and I bought, like,
the most grandma-looking clothes I could. [laughs]
Also, I deleted all of the photos from my social media
anywhere where I had posted pictures of myself modeling,
I had taken them down.
But then I thought that because I had done it before,
it wouldn't really matter.
♪
I had been teaching two or three months,
and I came into class one day,
and it was before school had started,
and a few of my students came in to the classroom.
It was a group of them, three or four girls,
and they came to my desk, and one of them was like,
"Ms. Deweese, uh, we need to talk to you."
Said, "Okay, yeah, sure. What's going on?"
And she goes,
"Well, the other day when you were sick,
We tried to find you online
so we could, you know, send you, like,
a "get well soon" message.
And we Googled your name, and we found your pictures."
And I said, "Oh, what pictures?
And she goes, "All of them."
♪
Yeah, all of them.
And I said, "Okay. So, who all knows?"
And she goes, "Everybody.
Like, a few of the students got ahold of them,
and they've been posting them on Twitter,
and they've just been, like, circulating around."
♪♪
And I said, "Thanks for telling me,"
And I started teaching the class,
and I had gotten maybe five minutes into my lesson
when my principal called me into her office.
♪
And she's like, "I don't really care about the pictures.
It's something that you did before,
but I am going to have to check with the district
and see how they want me to move forward."
She called me back the same day,
and she told me that the district
didn't really have any other disciplinary action for me
and that if there were any parents who were uncomfortable,
they would move the students from my class
to another teacher.
So I was like, "Okay, everything's good."
♪♪
Soon after, my principal told me
that there was one particular mother
who was very upset about these pictures.
And the mother said,
"Well, what are you gonna do about the teacher?"
And my principal told her, "I can't discuss that with you.
It's a personnel matter."
So, then the mom got mad,
and she contacted all the news stations.
Soon after that, I was told that I needed
to leave the campus because it was gonna be really crazy.
Here's a question for you.
Is it okay to be a "Playboy" model
before you become a teacher?
Right now, the answer for Cristy Nicole Deweese is no.
Parents of her students
complained about Deweese's modeling.
REPORTER: Deweese hasn't been back in the classroom
since her secret got out,
and it's not clear if she ever will return.
♪
They were going to put me on leave,
and they thought it would maybe be, like, a couple weeks
before I could come back.
It was a rough time. It was pretty stressful.
It was kind of scary.
The news stations were showing up at my house.
I remember my stepdad going to the door, and it just being,
like, random people out there trying to talk to me.
And people were constantly blowing up my phone.
I was like, I don't even know how they got my phone number.
People were threatening me online.
People were calling me all kinds of names.
♪
It was hurtful because a lot of the assumptions
and things that they were saying about me weren't true.
♪
Um, that I was a slut, that I was stupid.
That there was no way that I could be a good teacher
because I had posed in "Playboy."
REPORTER: The school district is keeping quiet so far,
but students and parents have both been speaking out.
It was just a lot going on, but at the time,
I still thought that I was gonna have my job.
She's not provocative. She's not anything.
She's, like, a really good teacher.
My students actually created a petition
to try to get me to keep my job.
♪
But then the district office told me
that there was just too much pressure from the media
and that they were gonna have to let me go.
She can't give tests because we saw her breasts.
A Dallas school district
has fired a 21-year-old Spanish teacher
because she posed nude for "Playboy" back in 2011.
It really was like a witch hunt, and I didn't understand why.
After I was fired, I was definitely sad.
I was really liking teaching. It's what I had studied for.
It was what I had seen myself doing long term.
♪
I was a good teacher.
The students loved being in my class.
They learned a lot.
Because I was bullied, I cared about providing, like,
a loving environment for them,
and all of a sudden that was being taken away
just because I posed for "Playboy" in college.
Even though at the time, I tried to ignore a lot of the outrage,
honestly, I was pretty mad about it.
I don't feel like I deserve to be fired
from my job as a teacher for posing in "Playboy" in college.
♪
And I'm not really sure why that one mom cared so much.
The issue was solved by her son being out of my classroom.
♪
It was no longer gonna affect her or her child,
but I guess she had some strong opinion about me being
naked on the Internet and wanted me to lose my job.
Obviously, getting fired was very stressful,
but it was more traumatic to have the news media hounding me.
And there were several people online
making a lot of negative comments about me.
I didn't feel like I had really done anything that would
make me deserve that kind of treatment.
Because I do live in Texas, I'm in the Bible Belt,
so I wasn't completely
blindsided by people's conservative reactions.
I think, you know,
there was a lot of religious influence on the decision,
and I was kind of expecting
there to be some outrage from that group of people.
It would have been nice
had "Playboy" made a supportive statement or something,
but they didn't reach out at all.
But I don't think that posing for "Playboy"
was worthy of that much attention.
I think it was blown way out of proportion. It was a lot.
♪
When I was in "Playboy," back at that time,
we didn't have Twitter, we didn't have Facebook,
we didn't have likes and that kind of feedback.
But there was enough publicity to feel the powerlessness
of being in the center of other people's conversation.
♪
And I think now I would fight against anybody
who wanted to cancel me
in the ways people did at that time.
♪♪
My experience protesting "Playboy"
was deeply distressing to me,
but I would still do it again.
Because it was the first time I really saw,
you can make change. You can speak up.
We couldn't really finish the conversation,
but we started it.
And I think it was a really important conversation
to be had.
♪
"Playboy" coming into campus was 25 years ago.
When I think if this could happen now,
I think there would be a lot more outrage about it,
and it might still happen,
but I think the response would be stronger.
I think it's progress.
I have to believe it's progress.
♪
"Playboy" is just a very complicated package of ideas.
We can't ignore the fact that "Playboy" was a magazine
that was explicit in its support for the civil rights movement,
for free speech,
separation of church and state,
gay rights.
But at the same time, I think that "Playboy"
absolutely embodied a lot of sexism, even misogyny.
And we like to think that women can make free sexual choices,
but we can't, because our choices are always
judged within a culture that is very sexist and patriarchal.
So, a young college age girl
takes her clothes off for "Playboy." We judge her.
Her peer on campus protests "Playboy." We judge her.
When it comes to sex, women can't win.
♪
When I agreed to do season one of this show,
I really did not anticipate saying as much as I did.
It tore me apart from my family.
Hugh Hefner was not a predator to me. He was family.
When people found out my mom had dated Hugh Hefner
and was the "Playboy" model, I was told,
"Oh, your mom's a glorified prostitute. You're a slut."
I should be able to tell my story as I lived it,
not somebody else's idea of what it was.