I picked up this book from Goodwill Izabella St. James Bunny Tales and I loved it. It was nice, trashy read, and the clumsy grammar just made me feel like I was really listening to the words tumbling from her pouty little mouth. I do not think a professional editor was used in this book. The descriptions of group sex with septuagenarian (at the time) Hefner were oogy, but overall the book was chock full of the beautiful people behaving badly stories we adore.
All its issues as a memoir aside (and they are plenty of them - read the Amazon comments) one thing that intrigued me in the book was the revelation that a number of girls in the Playboy orbit, including onsite ex-girlfriends of Hefner and even some actual Playmates that appeared in the Magazine were hiring out as very high end escorts, and this had apparently been happening for a good long time.
I stopped reading Playboy in the early 80’s. The writing quality declined (fell off a cliff actually) and the girls were increasingly forgettable, and plastic (figuratively and literally). But, in it’s heyday from the 60’s to the very early 80’s it was great! You would read the Playboy Playmate of the month bio descriptions of these amazingly beautiful women, and not think twice when they claimed they were going to be doctors, lawyers and Indian Chiefs etc. It seemed real. We wanted it to be real.
None of these bios had “I want to be an extremely well paid escort” or “I want to marry a rich man”, and yet it seems that is the direction a number of them went. In retrospect this certainly makes sense. If a pretty girl can get $ 10,000 or more a night, and live in the California fast lane vs being a working stiff I can see the appeal.
Like a a lot of men I like to think I am a hard nosed realists, but when it comes to attractive women we will believe just about anything we are told if it fits into our fantasy.
And here, I had always taken it as the default working hypothesis that there was a large overlap between the set of ladies willing to take off their clothes for money, and the set of ladies willing to have sex for money. The price would have to be right, of course, and we’ve all heard the old joke about “we’ve already established what you are”. And doubtless, there would be at least some who would be willing to do one but not the other. But like I said, default assumption.
I knew a bunny in college and would have been surprised if she were a prostitute. She pretended to be really dumb, but managed to get into UCLA and dropped the dumb act when she had a few drinks. She was what we used to call “easy”. None of the fellows she was easy with mentioned that it was for a price.
You might be a Doper if you find “dropped the dumb act when she had a few drinks” really hot, though “after a few drinks” is when we START the dumb act, except it isn’t an act.
It was by no means all of them, but there were more than a few that did this. The book makes it clear that for Hefner’s onsite “girlfriends” living in the mansion, there was a dividing line between recreational sex with guys they were attracted to, and the “work” of being Hefner’s arm candy and sperm dumpster.
Agreed. The words “not surprised” don’t even begin to cover it. Although “not even news” might be close as I think “the Bunnies were hookers” is included in nearly every Playboy memoir. And there are a lot of them.
Everyone has fantasies, including beautiful women. A Playmate might say she wants to be a doctor or a lawyer and end up an escort. But that doesn’t mean she was lying. She did want to be a doctor - but wanting to be a doctor doesn’t mean you will achieve it.
I also question whether these women really fit the mainstream definition of hookers. I doubt many of them were showing up at a stranger’s hotel room much less standing on a street corner. It was more like you said - there was a Playboy orbit.
Men got to be in it because they were wealthy, famous, or influential. And these men wanted to go home with attractive women.
Women got to be in the orbit because they were attractive and had the right “attitude”. Some women found they could go home with the men they met and receive “gifts”. Other women didn’t do this and found they stopped getting invited to the parties.
For a lot of the girls (per the book) beyond the $1000 a week cash handouts, the maintenance perks (and they were substantial) and the fully supported relatively luxurious lifestyle, the parties and the access to stars and powerful people they afforded, were really the main attraction to hanging with Hefner.
Re the parties, it was interesting that even into the 2000’s when Playboy is now mostly a worn out parody of it’s former glory, Hefner was* still* able to attract lots of A list stars and power people in the entertainment industry to his soirees.
Izabella St. James lived in the mansion for two years in the 2000s, a time when no such thing as Bunnies existed. You’re probably referring to Playmates and wannabes and girls who posed for pictorials and videos. Bunnies were a completely separate group of people and from everything I’ve read they hate to be confused with the mansion crowd.
Did some of those girls sleep with all the famous and rich guys who visited the mansion? Hard to believe otherwise. Were they hookers in any formal sense? When there were so many girls giving it away who can believe that anyone needed to pay $10,000 a night?
Wait, you say you read it in her book? I remember the book: I wouldn’t believe anything written in it, including the spelling of her name. Has anyone else who was there at the time ever stepped forward to confirm anything she wrote? All I remember are people saying the exact opposite.
The “pay for play” claim made in the book was not about the on site personnel and party attendees, but was about girls who were ex-mansion girlfriends and ex-playmates who had hooked up with high end escort services. These girls were not in the then current Playboy social orbit as current party invitees.
Excuse me, but as Exapno Mapcase noted, there seems to be perpetuated a common misidentification in the thread title.
**Bunnies =/= Playmates **(=/= Playboy Model =/= Hef’s Harem)
***Bunnies ***are the hostesses of the Playboy Clubs, and historically the management has been extremely conscientious about avoiding any hint of illegal activity. A vanishingly small number of Bunnies ever became…
***Playmates ***, 12 monthly centerfold models per year, most of whom spend at least the next year as contract spokesmodels for Playboy and from among these in turn a nontrivial number get room and board at the Mansion annex and are expected to be part of the events and parties surrounding the Chief. All Playmates are…
Playboy Models, but not all Playboy Models are Playmates – these include girls who have not done the centerfold shoot but appear recurrently in feature pictorials, vids, web, etc. Back in the Glory Days of Playboy, the plain old Model was likelier to have a seedier resumé while the Playmate was to be a more All-American Girl Next Door, but that hasn’t been so much so since before Anna Nicole. Some Playboy Models who haven’t made Playmate also get dormed at the Mansion annex. Technically, since somehow they always end up naked on the page, this group would include the majority of…
Hef’s "Girlfriends", the various babes to whom he has played Sugar Daddy for half a century. These range from classic gal-pals like Barbi Benton to, well… to what he’s been parading around the last ten years. You make that call. Though in his peak Hef was said to have been tapping a majority of any given year’s Playmates, surprisingly few of the recognized “Hef’s Girls” have been actual Playmates or Bunnies (as opposed to just dressing up as one for publicity events).
Honestly, nothing in the book was all that wildly unbelievable. A lot of the book is petty female “mean girls” bullshit drama between the girls. Despite her best efforts to paint herself in a positive light she mostly comes across as a very spoiled, highly entitled, duplicitous gold digger. Her description of Hefner’s relatively sad and tatty lifestyle are about what you would expect. She’s not making him out to be a monster, he’s just sort of a tragic figure. Nothing in the book rang (to me) all that false.
Hmm, I like the term “Mansion Girls” for what we’re dealing with here!
And in such a case I dunno if this calls for a phrasing of “Hef’s Girls are hookers after all” any more than would the case of people in any other occupation or social orbit (actress, model, dancer, dental hygienist, sorority sister, country club wife, book club member) who figures that high-end escorting helps her keep up her preferred lifestyle.
“Some Playmates might be tempted to work as high end escorts if the money is right, and their dreams of making it big don’t pan out” - Hmm… too big for a title
“Some women who get naked for money, might fuck you for money” - There, that’s got it.
The whole history of Hollywood is one long tale of girls trying for the stars, missing them, and winding up selling their bodies for money, directly or indirectly. Do I believe that some girls who were around Playboy at some point in their lives are included in this description? Sure do.
But that isn’t remotely the way you put it in your title or implied in the OP. Why smear everyone because of a few?
It seems to me quite reasonable that just because a woman’s sexual morality encompasses taking money for doing some things, it does not follow that she would accept money for doing ANY thing. That would be the old slippery slope argument. (Insert joke here.) Anybody remember the old catechism that went, “Girls should not chew gum, because a girl that will chew gum will smoke cigarettes, and a girl who will smoke cigarettes will drink liquor, and well, we know what a girl who will drink liquor will do!” CLASSIC slippery slope!
I remember once watching an interview of a porn star who explained that she would not do anal, because that was only for her husband. She had set limits for herself, they aren’t the ones most people would set, but they were hers.