Last December, Karen McDougal went on a modeling assignment to Cabo San Lucas and was surprised at the celebrity welcome she received. "Everyone there seemed to know who I am," says Miss December 1997. "I was out dancing and everybody was bringing me things to sign. I guess Playboy Mexico had just come out and people recognized me." Back in the U.S.A., where the December issue had already been out for weeks, Karenmania was sweeping the nation. The former preschool teacher with the Irish eyes, Cherokee cheekbones and "bubble butt" was an overwhelming favorite in the Playboy Readers' Poll, on the Internet and with viewers of Playboy TV. "Is all that true?" she asks modestly. "That's really cool. I'm honored."
But, wait--as they say--there's more. This 27-year-old beauty is also our Playmate of the Year.
"It's the biggest thing that's happened to me," she says, soaking up the afternoon sunshine in a park near the Playboy Mansion, where she's staying while shooting the Playmate of the Year video. Our chat offers Karen a rare moment of relaxation. "I have little time to myself," she says. "I work weekends, and when I'm not working, I'm doing interviews with other Playboy people, going to wardrobe fittings, things like that. It's not like my own free time, but it's not really work, either."
Karen is used to this kind of pace. "I'm the Energizer Bunny," she says. "I average maybe four or five hours of sleep a night." The fourth of five children raised by her mother and stepfather in the tiny hamlet of Sawyer, Michigan--"You blink, you miss it," she says--Karen went on to live near Detroit. She quit her teaching job to devote herself to modeling. Along the way, she won the local Venus International Swimwear competition and moved to Los Angeles to break into acting. "I want to play everything from a mother to a rebellious teenager to a bitch to a sexy girlfriend," she says. Karen has plans for real-life roles, too. She plans to eventually open a learning center for children. "But not in Los Angeles. It's too crowded here," she explains. "I want to go to a smaller community that doesn't have a lot of money." Our heartland girl also finds Hollywood to be a culinary culture shock. "Everybody here eats really healthfully," she explains. "I eat out, and there is no gravy on my mashed potatoes. They eat their sushi and little vegetables. Give me red meat and junk food." Fortunately, our Playmate of the Year is handy in the kitchen--a craft that she learned from her mom. "After I left home, I would call her and ask, 'How do you make this? How do you make that? Now, I can make meat-loaf, baked ham with brown sugar and cloves, pizza, lasagna, spaghetti--real fattening stuff!"
With these domestic skills it shouldn't be hard for Karen to achieve her goal "to be a great mother and a super wife." But for now, she says, "I'm focusing on my career, because my relationship is strong enough," referring to her beau of more than three years. "What's one or two years of building a career when we can have the next 50 together?" That sounds like a perfect deal to us.
