Debbie Does Playboy

Deborah Gibson cares about you. She wants to know if your cappuccino is foamy enough and if the heat lamp outside Buzz Coffee, a favorite place of hers on the Sunset Strip, is keeping you toasty. To make you smile she will peel off her stretchy blue sweater just to show you the even stretchier baby tee—the one with Thumper the rabbit on it—underneath. And when there's a break in the conversation, the girl will close her eyes, take a breath and sing to you. Sweetly, teasingly, almost in a whisper.

"I'm wild and free," the song goes. "I'm nothing but me." It's her latest single, called "Naked." And it's definitely keeping you toasty.

You may remember her as Debbie, the young Long Islander who sold 16 million albums, beginning in 1987 with Out of the Blue, but Deborah is the one you won't forget. At the age of 34 she is graceful where she was once gangly, and she has traded the sweet-16 routine—Debbie often gave interviews alongside her teddy bear collection and pooh-poohed sex before marriage—for grown-up glam.

"I'm not that girl anymore," she says. Gone are the bowler hats, the oversize blazers and the high-tops. She has filled out in all the right places and is more than game to talk about sex, drugs and rock and roll. "I feel like I'm breaking all the rules," she says.

Which is funny, because the rules defined Gibson. By not smoking or swearing or wearing torpedo brassieres, she established herself as the un-Madonna, a sort of Top 40 hall monitor. Pure and chaste, Gibson sang sunny songs of love and odes to electric youth. Gibson's goodness showed us precisely what was bad, yet it also made us wonder what she was hiding—or at least what was under her buttoned-up oxfords. A little girl, it turns out.

The truth is, Gibson wasn't as late to the ball as she'd like us to believe. In the early 1990s, around the time she and archrival Tiffany were discovering how fickle mall jammers can be, Gibson suddenly got the double meaning of her top 10 hit "Shake Your Love."

"I was 19 when I first had sex," she says. She looks at you directly when she says this, the way she might once have talked to you about algebra class. "It was so new and overwhelming, but the guy was great. I'm glad I grew up with the no-premarital-sex idea in my head, because it forced me not to grow up before I was ready. But once I discovered sex there was no turning back."

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There was a time when practically every suburban girl knew the lyrics to "Only in My (text concluded on page 147)Debbie Gibson(continued from page 134) Dreams" and "Lost in Your Eyes." The music wasn't cool, but Gibson knows in her heart that she planted the seeds for the current crop of female pop-rockers.

"Britney, Jessica Simpson and all the rest will deny that they grew up on my music," Gibson says with a sly smile. "But I'm sorry. If you were living in the South when 'Shake Your Love' was a hit, you were singing it with a hairbrush in your pink bedroom."

There's no bitterness in her tone, probably because (a) Gibson is rich enough not to care, and (b) she actually has talent and always did. Gibson wrote, produced and sang her own songs even when all she had was a crappy Casio keyboard and a four-track tape machine in the family garage.

And then there's (c): Gibson's career continues to thrive. She has flourished as a stage actress for more than a decade, with lead roles on Broadway and London's West End and in traveling productions of Les Misérables, Grease and Chicago. Doing theater helped her connect with her sensuality. Take her role in Gypsy: "I've never felt more powerful than when I was standing in front of an audience with nothing but feathers covering my breasts."

The same sense of confidence is displayed in these pictures. "There's not a joke about myself I haven't heard," Gibson says. "I'm already anticipating people's reactions to seeing me here: 'Lost in Your Thighs,' 'Electric Boobs.' But I'm like, 'Okay, whatever, bring it on.' "

In many ways Gibson is a whole new woman these days. She sold the pop-star mansion and now lives on her own in Los Angeles—happy, optimistic and, as the song goes, wild and free. Still, she hasn't left New York behind entirely. "I'm not like other L.A. girls," she says. "I like guys who can bring out the rude, politically incorrect side of me. And I'm really comfortable in my own skin and really comfortable with my body. I haven't had so much as a Botox shot. I'm probably the only 34-year-old in L.A. who hasn't. Everything's natural."

Which is why she decided to show off here, even though it earned her a few raised eyebrows. "My dad doesn't even like that they have nude statues in the White House," she says. "But Playboy is an icon. My guy friends want to know, 'Can you get me into the Mansion?' "

Gibson is more than happy to keep looking forward. "I recently had some old clothes shipped to me. When I saw the jackets with the padded shoulders I thought, I can't believe I was 19 years old and dressing like Joan Collins. I felt like begging the world to forgive me."

The way she looks now, we're the ones who should be begging.

"I'm really comfortable with my body. I'm probably the only 34-year-old in L.A. who hasn't had a Botox shot."

See more of Deborah Gibson's pictorial at cyber.playboy.com.

"I've never felt more powerful than when I was standing in front of an audience with nothing but feathers covering my breasts."