Girls Next Door

Since August, a new reality show has been running on E! called The Girls Next Door. It's about a distinguished gentleman who lives in a Holmby Hills mansion, wears pajamas all day, has three stunning girlfriends who never get jealous of one another and runs a media empire when he's not partying. Jaded reality viewers can be forgiven for figuring it's a setup--that either we're dealing with a typical bit of reality-show hyperbole or the whole season is leading up to the surprise twist when we learn it's all fake.

Except that we know the guy. You know him too: Hugh M. Hefner--Hef to me and you and everybody else--Editor-in-Chief of Playboy and master of the Playboy Mansion. And when it comes to The Girls Next Door, Hef's got a lesson to teach us: One man's fantasy is another man's reality--or, in this case, another mans reality TV.

"Most reality shows aren't very much related to reality, and they're about people who don't have much of a life," says Hef. "But I know there is this ongoing fascination with the Playboy Mansion and with my life. And this show is really the world of Playboy and the Mansion, with the focus on Holly, Bridget and Kendra. It's kind of like Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz, and I'm the guy behind the curtain."

In front of the curtain, meanwhile, are the three gorgeous young women you see pictured on these pages: Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson, Hef's girlfriends and our tour guides through a world in which fantasy becomes reality.

Holly was born in Oregon, grew up in Alaska and then moved back to Oregon for high school. She studied theater and psychology in Portland, then headed to Los Angeles to get into the entertainment industry. A friend of Hef's spotted her in a Hawaiian Tropic contest and invited her to the Mansion. Soon she was a regular guest. Still, it was a year before she really spoke to Hef. "He was intimidating, and there were so many other girls around," she says, laughing. "But I knew we had a lot in common from what I'd read about him. Once we started talking, he asked me out, and two days after we went out, I moved in."

That was four years ago, and Holly and Hef have been together ever since. She's the (text concluded on page 157) Girls next Door (continued from page 122) number one girlfriend, the one who shares his bedroom. "It's a relationship made in heaven," says Hef. "Despite the disparity in years, we have very real common interests. She loves classic jazz, she loves old movies, she loves Disneyland. The best times of my life are the times we're simply together."

When Holly first moved in, she was one of seven girlfriends; a year later, with the number still at more than half a dozen, Bridget arrived. Bridget is from Lodi, a small town in northern California, and as she made clear on the second episode of The Girls Next Door, she has wanted to be in Playboy since she was about four years old. Bridget auditioned in San Francisco during the Millennium Playmate Search and later stayed at the Mansion and shot a Playmate test. After an excruciating wait, she got a letter saying she hadn't been chosen.

Still, she wasn't ready to give up. After earning a bachelor's degree in public relations and a master's in communication, she moved to L.A. She won modeling jobs, got on the list for Mansion parties and befriended the other girls before attracting Hef's eye. When she accepted his offer to move into the Playboy Mansion, she found herself among about a dozen girls vying to become official girlfriends.

"I wanted to be in the magazine, and I felt that if Hef just saw me and got to know me, he'd want me in the magazine," she says. "But once I met him and started hanging out here, my whole philosophy changed. It was enjoying his company, caring about Hef and building that relationship."

The newest girlfriend is Kendra, from San Diego. She arrived at a time when Hef was making changes in his group of girlfriends, downsizing from seven to six to three. "Holly and I didn't get along with all the other girls, but when we found Kendra we thought, Oh, a nice person, and we took her in," says Bridget.

For Kendra, it all happened quickly. A sports fanatic and lifelong tomboy who grew up watching ESPN and who barely knew about Playboy, she only reluctantly modeled for photos when an acquaintance pressed her. But her pictures made it to a website and caught the attention of the Mansion, which hired her to be one of the body-painted girls at Hef's 78th birthday party, in April 2004.

"I was living day by day, working as a dental assistant, living on Easy Mac and SpaghettiOs," says Kendra. "I didn't know where my life was going. I'd never been in a mansion before, never seen any celebrities."

Before the party, Hef saw Kendra's picture. "I was fascinated with her," he says. "I met her at the party, and in the days immediately afterward I called her and said, 'This may be presumptuous, but I know you're in college and you're going to be off during the summer. If you have any interest I'd love to have you come up and stay here at the Mansion.'"

Kendra hesitated for about a month before moving in. "Hef saved me, basically," she says. "He kind of took my life and made it into something." She is currently studying to be a massage therapist.

All three girls had some reservations about letting a TV camera into their lives, but all have come to enjoy the results. Kendra thinks the experience brought the trio closer together. Holly was worried that the producers would try to create conflict for the cameras but found that wasn't the case. And Bridget thinks that viewers are getting an accurate picture of what life is like at the Mansion and a partial view of the three Alices who inhabit this Wonderland. "I don't think people will get a complete view of who we are," she says with a laugh, "but at least they'll be able to tell us apart."

As for the man behind the curtain. Hugh M. Hefner looks at this slice of his reality and likes what he sees. "I think that in a very conscious way I created a world that came from the dreams and fantasies of my adolescence," he says. "And those dreams are shared, obviously, with many millions of other people of all ages--not just guys but girls as well. It's been a wonderful ride."

see more of these girls at cyber.playboy.com.