Renee Tenison, Playmate of the Year, 1990

Reneé Tenison thought she was dreaming. This place certainly wasn't Melba, the tiny Idaho town where she'd grown up. It wasn't Boise, where she had worked in a computer factory. Rubbing sleep from her eyes, sitting up in a curtained bed in an elegant hotel room, she wondered where on earth she was. "Then it dawned on me," she says, shaking her head, astonished by the events of the past few months. "I thought, I'm in Paris. Playboy is taking pictures of the Playmate of the Year, and it's me!"

At 21, Reneé is the proud owner of a sleek new Eagle Talon TSi, which will replace the old Mustang she used to drive around town. She is $100,000 richer—a sum that represents more than five years' worth of her work at the factory. And much more important to Reneé than the goodies that come with her new title are two firsts: She's proud to be our first Playmate (text concluded on page 174)Playmate of the Year(continued from page 137) of the Year of the Nineties and the first Playmate of the Year of African-American heritage ever. "I don't think of myself as black or white," says Reneé, who had plenty of time to ponder her uniqueness growing up in spuds-white Idaho. Her dad, a farmer, is black. Her mother is white. Unable to find a minister in their home state who was willing to hitch an interracial couple, her parents had to go to Nevada to get married. "Things were better by the time I was growing up. There wasn't much prejudice," she says. Even so, "we knew we weren't like everyone else." She and her identical twin, Rosie—who now signs autographs "Reneé" when mistaken for her famous sis—proudly asserted their uniqueness by "dressing wild" at their nearly all-white high school. In that crowd of Idaho kids dressed in jeans and flannel shirts were two mocha beauties in "leopard-spot suits—we never got asked out on dates, but we didn't mind. It was kind of fun to be different."

Two years ago, Reneé entered the Miss Idaho beauty pageant. She failed to make the top five. At a Halloween party, dressed sexily in a skimpy costume, she was again an also-ran, losing a contest to a girlfriend of hers who was dressed as a candy-coated chocolate. Still, that night presaged the dream come true that lay ahead; Reneé had worn a knockoff of a Playboy Bunny Costume.

Certain that she looked better than her competition, Reneé's boyfriend took a few pictures and sent them to us. In no time, Reneé was Miss November 1989. Soon she was trying to remember her high school French, shooting this pictorial in Paris—our Playmate of the Year for 1990.

Sitting by the swimming pool at Playboy Mansion West a few days after her return from Paris, she is dressed in black and white—black cowboy boots, black-and-white-checked slacks, a black blouse that's transparent from shoulders to sternum, rhinestone earrings white in the sun. She smiles, shaking her head. "I can't believe what's happened. I'm very proud, but it's hard to get used to. I mean, the last thing I ever won was a track event in high school back in Idaho," says Reneé Tenison, Miss 1990. "It's a long way from there to Playmate of the Year."

The very first time I saw Playboy," says Reneé, "I thought, If I ever had a chance like that, I'd do it in a heartbeat." Now her pulse is quickened by an all-wheel-drive Eagle Talon TSi (below) with a check for $100,000 in its glove compartment. The money and the car, fab as they are, impress Reneé less than the symbolic weight of her new role. "I'm a mix, a mulatto—different," she says. "A first as Playmate of the Year. It's exciting, but there's responsibility, too. When you're different, you can't afford to make mistakes. I want to represent Playboy as well as I can. I'm not Vanessa Williams; there are no skeletons in my closet." We're not worried. Playboy admires Reneé's sense of duty, but we chose her for her beauty. There's no mistaking that.

Posing for Playboy "isn't so much about sex. It's about freedom," Reneé says. "You can't try to be sexy. You have to feel it. You just have to be yourself. If you are comfortable with your own sexuality, it shows. And that's sexy."