Kendra Wilkinson

OUR GIRL NEXT DOOR TURNED AMERICAN JUGGERNAUT

y^\ et us now praise that rare

m and wondrous specimen:

¦ the unfiltered, unbridled,

^J unaffected female—she

C?*>^^ who disarms witliout cal-^^^^ dilation or agenda, she who personifies the Human Blurt. And oh, how she Blurts! It is Ixith freak of nature and rapturous gift to humankind, if you think about it. And yet it's almost unthink­able that tliere even exists tliis miraculous breed that can't help itself from just... thinking out loud! And often very loud— not to name names or anything. (All right, the pictures here seem to suggest tliat San Diego's own Kendra Leigh Wilkinson Bas-kett is where we're headed with tliis paean, okay?) Still, could there Ix1 a more refresh­ing type to simplify life for men eternally confounded by intangible "hints," "sig­nals" and "assumptions" issued by most women? (It's a male failing, perhaps, but few of us are equipped to decipher the secret language of subtle eyebrow manip­ulation, especially, say, during telephone conversations.) But then there are these Other Ones, who are loud and proud and clear and also perpetually laughing. (Can life get much dreamier?) Blissfully devoid of self-restraint, these are the magical

aberrant ones who will say anything and, in so doing, say everything you will likely ever need to know.

Take this one in particular: She, after all, may be the most shimmering exem­plar currently out there unloading classic Blurts across the culture. Never mind that those Blurts first took widest wing when ricocheting off'the stately walls of Playboy Mansion West (as television cameras rolled); by all accounts, she just showed up that way—discovered naked in body paint, no less—with nothing to hide and nowhere to hide it. No, this one recast candor in her own carefree, sun-splashed, locker-room-friendly image and will rarely second-guess herself, because she knows exactly what she means—more or less. ("My definition of lx-autv is confidence." she has said, thus

saying everything—and quite beautifully, too.) A toweling, if petite, champion of unclouded expression, she leaves no room for mystique or subterfuge or head games. She is just that considerate and pure.

Indeed, behold this ran­dom sampling of spontaneous truth bombs launched from the Keiidra lips over these

past handful of spotlit years: "Whenever I feel nervous, I feel like I have to poop." "I don't want responsibilities right now! I'm 20 years old! I'll liave responsibilities when I'm. ..27!" "God, I love my legs and my ass!" "Can he go look in my drawer? He'll see my vibrator, but...." "There's nothing better than a bunch of balls hanging down from your door!" "Olive Garden is the sliit! It's the best Italian food ever!" "The French love...tits!" "I've thrown up in almost every limo that has taken me out in the last week. God, they hate me right now!" "I have to party! I deserve it! I've worked hard!" "The best tiling about tliis pimp cup is that it was given to me by a pimp—there's nothing better than that." "Whatever I put on is gonna be hot—you know, I could wear two Band-Aids and a cork...." And so on—blessedly, for the most part.

Most always, these fine pronounce­ments come appended witli that laugh of hers—you know, that aaahhhhhh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha thing she does. Unmistakably, tliis is the Kendra Laugh, a warm and strangely infectious stac­cato, throaty and all self-effacing, with no trace of cynicism or snark. It was, of course, made famous during her cele­brated premarital residency as the most irrepressible one third of lief's original Girls Next Door love triumvirate. ("I was fascinated with her," Big Daddy has con­fessed, using understatement to perhaps balance the giddy overstatement that is her; as a result, however, there was baiely any wild wliim she presented that he didn't patiently indulge.) Anyway, her Laugh rollicked dependably across five TV seasons of Mansion mayhem before spinning off last year into uncharted domesticity—welcome to K!'s Kendra, the madcap hurdles leapt by a peripatetic young NFL wife (of the oft-relocated Hank Baskett, now a Minnesota Viking), new mother (of little-big Hank IV) and sudden New York Times bestselling mem­oirist (of Sliding Into Home)—wherein the ahhh-ha-ha-has rarely cease. like the best natural-born comediennes, she has never quite understood why she is funny—which is precisely the reason she has become this happy comic spectacle in motion, nowadays Hailing at the foreign rigors of real life. For instance: "The first time I mailed something on my own, like a couple of months ago, I didn't put a stamp on it. My mom was like, 'Are you serious?' I'm like, 'Dude, I've never been on my own before.'" Or tliis cozy mater­nal 'Iweet: "Up all night witli the lil man again but I enjoy every min of it. He almost peed in my lace today."

And so new Blurts keep erupting while the old ones never lose currency. like "You'd tliink 1 would change dra-mastically. Dramatically. Sliit." Anyway, nobody's hop­ing for change anywhere around here. Or around her. Go, Blurt Goddess.

enng chwnnion oj unclouded e

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fur subterfuge or heaA ¥&/&:¦,.

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See more of Kendra atclub.playboy.com.