Wait a minute… I haven’t followed her career much lately, but didn’t she make her name as a Christian singer?
Not that I think there’s anything un-Christian about posing nude in a national magazine, mind you, but it’s my experience that things like that tend to set up a lot of cognitive dissonance with most folks.
I think you’re thinking of Amy Grant.
Pash
That would be neat, if Amy Grant posed for Playboy. I used to think she was so beautiful back when she was singing pop songs like “Heart In Motion” back in the early '90s, when I had no clue she made her reputation as a Christian singer.
The simple answer is to get people talking about her again, since no one said much about her in the past 10 years or so. Having a stable career is one thing, but without that “buzz” factor of people constantly talking about you, you can’t expect it to keep on going forever.
Frankly, I’m unimpressed by the photos. “Average” is putting it mildly. A quick peek in this thread will reveal that we’ve got a number of Doperettes who are way hotter than Ms. Gibson (now if we could only inspire them to pose nekkid).
About the makeup…uhh, she wasn’t in a fire or a motorcycle accident or something, was she?
Ahem…and this photo spread would be located where?
(I don’t know if divulging such info would be against the rules, but since no one so far has asked for them it occurs to me that it might be. If so, please disregard my lecherous request.) 
Check out posts 5 through 8.
Got it! Thanks. 
Perhaps you’re thinking of Debbie Boone. Roughly popular at the same time, although a little bit older.
Hijacking just for a moment, did anyone see Belinda Carlisle’s photos from last summer? The same source as above doesn’t seem to have them.
Debbie Boone was popular for a brief period (more than 20 minutes, though, and in the 70s) around 10 years before Debbie (now Deborah) Gibson was popular.
Yes, I saw them (still have the issue someplace). I always thought Belinda was uber-hot, but her pictoral didn’t do much for me. Another case of “Damn, what I woulda give to see this 20 years ago”. Looks like she’s had a some augmentation and too much make up. Probably not too bad for a 40-something (I mean I’d hit it even without beer goggles), but nothing stunning.
Nothing wrong with looking at 40-something nekkid ladies, but if not for the celebrity angle none of the recent one’s I’ve seen were too impressive. Katarina Witt being the exception IMHO. Buns of steel and just pretty dang hot.
Wait, wait, wait…
Teri Polo posed for Playboy?
::runs to Google::
We so need an issue to be The Girls of the Straight Dope.
Yes and I thought she looked quite good too. It was last month BTW.
Yeah, I was thinking of Amy Grant. I had both of them pegged in my memory as “that singer my sister used to listen to a lot back in the 80s”. Oops.
I thought Belinda Carlisle looked stunning in Playboy, what ruined the pictorial for me was the airbrushing. I wish Playboy would show the women as they are. A few wrinkles and maybe some softness on the body don’t make Belinda Carlisle any less of a knockout than she is.
Debbie Gibson looks amazing as well, though for the life of me I can’t figure out why they’d airbrush a 34 year old’s face.
The celebrity pictorial that really disappointed me was Denise Richards’. She didn’t look bad, just not as great as I thought she was going to look.
The issue finally arrived in my mailbox.
Gibson doesn’t look terrible, but the pictures aren’t going to launch me into a frenzy of punching the clown, either.
I dunno, maybe it was the hair. She is a stunning woman, but I thought her pics were only OK. Certainly she has a great body, but something wasn’t working in that pictorial.
So when did Amy Grant do Playboy?
I’d pay good money for that issue!