Playboy has named its new Playmate of the Year, Raquel Pomplun. One of the things it’s saying is that she is the first Mexican-American to be named PMOY.
That struck me as unlikely and it only took me about a minute of googling to find out it wasn’t true. Stacy Sanches, the 1996 PMOY, is Mexican-American.
Playboy went through this once before. In 2001, Lindsey Vuolo was publicized as Playboy’s first Jewish Playmate. When people questioned this and found some past Playmates had been Jewish, the claim was changed to Vuolo being the first openly Jewish Playmate. Which is kind of a silly distinction - Playboy had never mentioned its models’ religions before Vuolo. So nobody had been “openly” Jewish in the same sense that nobody had been openly Catholic or openly Baptist or openly Zen Buddhist.
But even to the degree we’re talking about being the publicist for Playboy magazine, you’ve got to have some credibility with the media outlets you’re trying to get publicity from. If they start thinking your press kits needs to be run through fact checking, they’ll probably just decide to not bother running them instead.
Googling around (because this is what I do with my Friday evenings now) Sanches’ father was Mexican-American and her mother was Irish-American. Does that make a difference?
