OK, so you do seem to be saying that the “Girls of _______” are not really the girls of ____________. Maybe you’re right, I don’t know. Do you have any evidence, or are you speculating?
I know what you meant, but look at her pics. She was 115# in a pig’s eye. At 5’-6" she was a buck-forty, easy. A very shapely 140#, and “shapely” requires something to provide the shape. She is from Wheaton, IL so I assume some of the shape came from the Cock Robin that used to be downtown. NONE OF THAT IS INTENDED TO BE INSULTING! Janet was (and probably is) a lovely woman with an absolutely jaw-dropping figure. She just weren’t no waif.
When Playboy came to my school for a “Girls of…” special, the editor of the school paper went for a photo shoot with the photog (and later wrote about it for the paper). He didn’t take any nudes of her, but she was impressed that he took some shots, and showed her how to pose to get a good portrait photo. His photos made her feel pretty and desirable, she wrote. So at least the casting calls were open to any female student, and he didn’t just blow off the women who weren’t Playmate-gorgeous.
And while “I read it for the articles” has always been a punchline - pace Lynn Bodoni, in college I bought it to jerk off to tasteful nudes - how many other porn mags have published an interview with a President?
For what it’s worth, one of the girls I graduated HS with and who went to the same university I did appeared in a Girls of the PAC-10 special. This was 1984-85. While she was certainly gorgeous, her figure definitely wasn’t the “typical” Playmate type for that era. She was (and still is, at least the last time I saw her at a class reunion) very slender and small-busted.
Did she go to the University of Washington? If so, I didn’t know her but I knew somebody who did.
snicker My father-in-law arranged for some Playboy party to occur at his college. Eye opening for Missouri in the late 50s 
Don’t forget what the very first Playboy article was in the first issue, “Miss Gold-Digger of 1953", a warning to all guys how a woman will trap you for your money. It seems the girls were really living the high life on alimony so beware.
Why would you start from the assumption that they actually are? You already recognize that the photo captions and model “personal profiles” are little more than bits of creative fiction. Why shouldn’t we assume that similar liberties are taken with the described provenances and occupations of the models as well?
You’re thinking it over too much – point to where I actually said they weren’t. I said that the “Girls of ______” features were part of the marketing pitch that the magazine brought you “the girl next door”, after they could no longer say it about the Playmate. **A marketing gimmick can be factually based and still a marketing gimmick. ** Jaime Hammer for instance WAS in fact a coed at a college in Arizona when she got “discovered” and debuted in a “College Girls” issue; then she quickly showed up on the other themed-pictorial specials (never made it to Playmate material, though) and eventually moved on to star in her own porn site (BTW do I have to tell people to not image search at work for Playboy models?). Whether she was auditioned at a campus visit or an open call (and they DO open calls) would be sort of indifferent ISTM.
As I said: because I knew a couple of women who posed. You seem eager to believe that the “Girls of” features were faked, but I have presented evidence that they were not. You have presented no evidence to the contrary.
The college girls features were heavily promoted and there were witnesses and pictures and videos of the college visits and auditions. The girls’ names and colleges were published. Press releases were sent to hometown papers.
Washington State
Several of my former students have appeared in various “Girls of the Pac-10” features. They did it just to have the memory when they are older.
Cynthia Heimel, who for many years wrote Playboy’s “Women” column, said that writers were treated very well at Playboy.
No waif, but not even close to plump. I can Google her photos. She was [noparse]a slim, busty woman[/noparse]. On the skinny side, in fact.
It’s near certainty that the earlier Girls of the… pictorials were real. They started in 1977. A Girls of the Ivy League in 1979 stirred up enormous controversy and if any of the girls were frauds it would have been a huge PR disaster. They might have changed over the years, but we need better evidence than anything you’ve given.
Ah yes, “Bingo Bans the Bomb.” I’m afraid I’ve never liked that story much, because Wodehouse and nuclear weapons just don’t mix. There’s a limit to one’s disbelief that Edwardian gents still exist into the 60’s.
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(Aunt Dahlia might be okay with it; as a fellow magazine publisher, she would understand the need to do whatever it takes to get the punters to sign on the dotted line).
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Quite so. A hard realist when it came to running a magazine.
On a related note, anyone here frequent (or even go once to) a Playboy Club? It was the place to take clients that you wanted to impress. Some clients, anyway.
I was surprised to discover that not only do Playboy Clubs still exist, they’ve opened some in recent years. I always figured they sort of faded away about the time Roger Moore decided to stop being James Bond, but apparently not.
My dad took my mother and I to one in Chicago when I was just a little kid, about 8 or so - we stayed at what was then known as the Playboy Towers Hotel (I still remember the rooms were $50 a night, which was quite pricey at the time). I was fascinated by the Bunnies. It was me my mom had to admonish for staring and pointing, not my dad. 
I was on a college band trip in 1977 when our rather large group was trying to check into the Radisson hotel in Denver. It was shortly before noon, when a group of six or so “businessmen” barged through the group to get to the elevators, saying “emergency! emergency!” Of course, they headed to the top floor to the Playboy Club for a business lunch.