Free at Last

I've been asked a million times why I agreed to appear in Playboy in March 1989. Having grown up under the strict tenets of the Jehovah's Witnesses, I have to confess that I approached the whole thing very naïvely. Originally, I agreed to be photographed fully clothed; but even then, I wavered on my decision and reneged on the deal.

The funny thing is, I'd never really seen a copy of the magazine. One time, I looked at a piece it ran on the Jacksons, but I didn't dare look at any of the pictorials, since reading a magazine like Playboy constituted grounds for immediate disfellowship from the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Before posing, I looked through several issues of the magazine. I knew some of the women who'd posed nude over the years, and I admired them immensely. Then it struck me, What is wrong with appearing in Playboy? Why shouldn't I? I realized that my initial negative reaction hadn't been based on my true feelings but either on what the leaders of my church might think or on how my parents would react. What about what I thought?

That was one of the first times in my life when I made a decision based on what I felt was right for me. In fact, I was facing life on my own for the first time, having left home and the clutches of my overprotective parents in the spring of 1988, less than a year before I met with Playboy. Still, my parents' hold spanned thousands of miles, and they were wearing me down with their constant pleas and threats. I'd told them repeatedly that I was on my own at last, yet they persisted in asking when I was coming home to live. My mother and I had been extremely close. My father, Joseph, who was dictatorial and abusive, also served as my manager. The only way to escape his control was to leave home.

The battle against my sheltered upbringing was difficult, compounded by constant criticism concerning the choices I was making on the direction of my career. In 1988, for example, after the release of my album You're Gonna Get Rocked, my sister Janet called to alert me that I'd been the subject of several family meetings.

"About what?"

"About the way you're dressed on your new album cover." At one of these, I later found out, my brother Marlon defended me, saying, "I'm not attending any more of these meetings. It's ridiculous. Let her live her own life. Why are you guys always trying to control her? Besides, the album's out. It's over and done with."

The controversial article of clothing was a rhinestone-encrusted leather brassiere-style top--provocative but hardly revealing by today's standards. Still, Jermaine was outraged, as was Mother. You'd have thought they had just come off the farm, with no idea that pop music and a sexy image go hand in hand. "La Toya," Mother cautioned, "you have to be careful about the kind of pictures you take. Be really careful."

I listened, my heart pounding, as I thought, Wait until she sees what's coming next.

The Playboy connection was one of those crazy things. Had I not been confronting my new-found independence, I certainly would have turned down the magazine's offer. Discussions went on for months under utmost secrecy. You'd have thought the magazine was publishing Pentagon secrets. The project even had a code name: Toyota.

The photo sessions took place in New York in November 1988. To ensure complete privacy, Playboy rented the Neil Simon Theater on Broadway. From the beginning, I insisted that everything be done tastefully and artistically. In my mind, that still meant not showing anything.

Stephen Wayda, the photographer, had me pose for the picture that opened the layout, in which I have a finger raised to my pursed lips, as if I'm saying "Shhhh!" Well, my robe slipped down, exposing a breast. When I realized it, I thought I would faint on the spot. But when Stephen showed me the test Polaroid, I saw it wasn't so bad after all. The final day of shooting went very smoothly. I had the most fun when I posed with a 60-pound Burmese python. I love snakes and wanted to do a shot all covered with them. I was disappointed that there was only one; I'd envisioned six or seven.

Once the magazine hit the newsstand, Arsenio Hall joked on TV that my breasts weren't real. Sorry, Arsenio. When I first heard his comments, I considered sending him X rays to prove him wrong. But then I decided, Why give him any satisfaction? Besides, in the grand scheme of things, controversy over my breasts' authenticity seemed pretty silly. (One good thing to come out of the pictorial: Speculation that Michael and I were the same person was permanently laid to rest.)

Prior to the publication date, I was contractually forbidden to disclose anything about the pictures to anyone, including my own family. I had to tell somebody, though, and decided to confide in Janet when she visited me in New York around Christmastime.

"Jan, I'd really like to talk to you," I said. "It's important."

"Well, then, start talking," she snapped, without looking up from her coloring book. We had been so close, but Janet then lived at home with my parents, who remained unhappy and vocal about my declaration of independence and may have driven the wedge between us.

"It's personal," I responded. "Can't we go into another room and talk privately? I hardly ever see you."

"No, we can talk here." There were other people around, so I let it drop, somewhat hurt by her abruptness.

Several weeks before the issue hit the stands in January 1989, I phoned home. As usual, while I talked to Mother, Joseph listened in on the extension. We were having a pleasant conversation for a change, when suddenly he interjected, "Kate, tell her!"

"Tell her what?" Mother asked innocently.

"Tell her, tell her what you heard," he urged.

"I didn't hear anything."

"You know what you heard, Kate!" Joseph said in annoyance. "All right, I'll tell her. La Toya, I heard that you posed for the centerfold of Playboy. Did you?"

"Of course not," I answered nervously. "I would never do anything like that."

"OK. You'd better be telling the truth," he said, "because somebody said that they saw some pictures."

"No, I didn't pose for the centerfold," I said, which, if you wanted to get technical, was true.

Janet called later to ask the same question. Again, I denied it. Then Michael phoned a few days after that. This was the one I'd been bracing myself for, because Hugh Hefner had called to let me know that Michael had shown up unexpectedly at the Playboy Mansion, ostensibly to visit the exotic animals. Somehow, he had obtained photocopies of the layout; I knew they weren't from Hef. When my brother called, I guessed he might know something, but I had no idea he'd actually seen the photos.

We spoke for a long time without mention of the pictures. I couldn't stand it any longer. "I heard you were at Hef's house the other day," I said.

After a moment's silence, Michael replied, "Yeah. How did you know?"

"They told me. What were you doing there?"

"Just visiting."

"Do you want to ask me something, Mike?"

"Uh, no."

"Are you sure?"

(text continued on page 158) Free at Last (continued from page 90)

"Uh-huh." We were quiet for what seemed like a very long time, then he said, "I saw your pictures."

"What pictures?"

"Your pictures, La Toya."

"You couldn't have!"

"Well, I have them right here. And I'll prove it to you: OK, here you are with the snake...and here's one where you have on a white terrycloth bathrobe, and you have your finger up to your mouth, like you're saying 'Shhhh!'"

"My God, you do have them!"

"Yes," he said, laughing, "and I think they're great! Diana Ross thinks they're fabulous. You know, you're going to sell more copies than any other issue in Playboy history." That Michael, always concerned with sales records. Then he got serious.

"La Toya, you have to tell me why you did it. When I used to walk into your bedroom at home, if you were in your bra and teddy, you'd scream for Mother and throw things at me. And now you've posed. I think it's great, but I just can't believe you did it. Why?"

"Well...."

"Wait! I'm going to tell you why you did it."

"Go ahead, Mike." I found this amusing. As perceptive as he was, how could he possibly know?

"OK," he said excitedly, like a detective solving a crime. "The first reason is, you did it to get back at Joseph, to let him know he can't tell you what to do; to tell him that you're grown now and can make your own decisions."

My jaw dropped.

"The second reason is that you want to get back at the religion."

"Oh, my God!" I gasped.

"Now, the third reason--I don't know if it's true or not--is that you wanted to get back at Mother, too. I hope that one isn't true, La Toya." But it is, I thought.

"I never told anyone any of this, Mike. How could you know what I was thinking?"

"I know," he said, "because that's why I wrote Bad. And that's why I wiggle the way I do and grab myself in that video and in The Way You Make Me Feel. It's to get back at Joseph, and tell them I can do what I want, and they can't control me. So when I heard you posed for Playboy, I knew why you did it. To show them, to tell them that you're in control from now on. And it will tell them, too. It will set them straight."

There was never any question in my mind that Michael had rebelled just as I had. From the first line of Bad or the video for Leave Me Alone, I'd seen a difference in the persona Michael chose to present to the world. He was more aggressive, no longer the victim.

While I believe my brother's videos are some of the best ever made, I'm at a loss to understand how someone who loves children as much as Michael does could produce entertainment that so graphically and relentlessly depicts violence. Take, for instance, the "Smooth Criminal" segment of his video Moonwalker. I can't watch without cringing the scene where the little girl is repeatedly kicked, slapped and stomped on. To me, that's not merely effective film making, that's a painful memory of life in my family.

In several of Michael's videos, intimacy is crushed by betrayal, anger, secrecy or persecution. Pain is always eluded by his becoming invincible, invisible, uncatchable or unbeatable; it's every powerless child's fantasy. What I find so telling, though, is that in so many of his works, Michael casts himself as a do-gooder. Yet no matter how admirable, his ends are inevitably accomplished through force or violence, as in "Smooth Criminal."

Months after our conversation, when I began thinking a lot about my family, I started interpreting my brother's work the same way he'd interpreted my appearing in Playboy. Equipped with words and images, he painted a far more explicit and--to me, at least--painful picture of growing up in the stifling and manipulative atmosphere of the Jackson family.

•

With the publication of my pictorial in the March 1989 issue of Playboy, I embarked on a promotional tour, appearing on virtually every major television program, including Donahue and Late Night with David Letterman. Of course, the first question was always, "What does your family think?" to which I honestly replied, "Some agree with it, some don't." That proved to be the understatement of the year.

The issue hadn't been out more than a few days before my brother Jermaine went on TV's Entertainment Tonight, condemning what I'd done. I'd posed for Playboy, he charged, because I couldn't get a hit record and couldn't sing. It proved to me something I'd realized a long time ago: Without a hit record, you don't count in my family. My brother Tito, however, sitting silently beside Jermaine, looked into the camera and said simply, "We love you, La Toya." Tito has always been a quiet, steady voice of reason and logic.

I'd done the right thing for me, but few in my family shared that view. Janet called me, furious not that I'd posed but that I hadn't told her about it. My explanation that I'd tried to when she visited me in New York did not sway her. As I hung up, I remember thinking, This is only the beginning.

Eventually, I received the call I anticipated from Jermaine, who gave me an earful.

"I want you to know that you're a piece of shit! And I'm saying this because I know you're mad at me for cursing. But I want you to know that's what you are! You've degraded our family and you've made us all look bad." I found that criticism interesting coming from the father of an out-of-wedlock child.

"Jermaine," I said quietly, "when you calm down and can control your temper, then call me back, OK?"

He just shouted over me. "Another thing: I don't like you going on television and saying that we agree with what you've done! None of us agrees, so stop saying it!"

Thank goodness not all my siblings agreed with Jermaine. Michael urged me not to reply to him publicly, as several publications and television programs were dying for me to do. "Don't take Jermaine's bait," he warned, adding, "I want you to know that what you did is really great. But if they ask you what I think about it, please don't tell them." As much as I love Michael, he always seems to play both sides.

Jackie's call was the most touching. "I want you to know that I agree with whatever you do," he said. "I haven't seen the pictures, and I don't want to see them, because you're my sister. But I support you one hundred percent, and I love you."

Of all the calls, the one that said what I really wanted to hear was Marlon's. Having broken away from the family to live on his own terms, perhaps he best understood how I felt. Somehow he, too, had gotten an advance copy of the layout. "I saw the pictures, and I want you to know that they are beautiful," he said, "though I think the business with the snake went a little too far, and I don't agree with what you've done."

I felt a twinge of hurt but said, "Marlon, you're entitled to your own opinion. Thank you for telling me what you thought."

Before hanging up, he added tenderly, "Don't let the other members of the family get to you. Just do what you have to do."

The biggest surprise of all was Joseph's response: none at all. Mother, on the other hand, was bitterly upset with me. "Don't you ever, ever pose for Playboy again!" she sputtered when we finally spoke. "You've embarrassed me, La Toya!"

"I understand how you feel," I answered, "but don't you think Jermaine's overreacting?"

"Don't you know that Jermaine got on television and said those things because he loves you so much, La Toya?" she replied, as if that made sense.

"You call that love, Mother? You know better than that!"

"Well, anyway, I know you didn't really want to do it."

"Mother, nobody forced me," I said firmly. "I had the final say-so. I could have said no, but I didn't. That's what I wanted to do. But I'm still the same person inside. Can't you see that I am still your daughter?"

"Don't you ever do that again!" was all she said before hanging up. (As you can see, I still refuse to take orders from home.)

I certainly didn't expect Mother to be thrilled by the pictures, but I didn't think our relationship would dissolve over them. I was wrong. From then on, if I called home and said, "Hello," she'd answer, "Hi, Jan!" Realizing her mistake, she'd then claim to be too busy to talk. It was as if I didn't exist.

Upset, I told Michael about it, but he didn't believe me, saying, "Doesn't sound like Mother to me" or "Maybe she really is busy." I realized I would never convince him that Mother was anything other than a saint. That hurt, too. Michael and I had shared everything. All I wanted from him was a little moral support, a shoulder to cry on.

I couldn't stand the coldness, so I confronted my mother over the phone. "What is it?" I asked her. "We used to be best friends. What happened?"

"You're the one who decided to leave," she sniffed.

"But Randy left. Janet left. Michael left. You don't treat them like this."

She had no answer. But I did. This wasn't about love, this was about control.

I later came to realize that the pictorial was a test to see if my parents could love and accept me for the woman I am rather than the little girl they tried to mold. Whether or not my parents agree with everything I do, I am still their daughter. But I am in control.

"'When I heard you posed, I knew why,' Michael said. 'To show that you're in control from now on.'"

For this, her second Playboy pictorial, La Toya Jackson has contributed pictures and words--an excerpt from her new book. She's also joining us in a hot 900-number promotion. (Details on page 175.)