Jenny McCarthy

was a shy young lass from Chicago ¦when she first posed for. fl^atrboy. Now she's an icon.

Jenny McCarthy is hot in Hollywood

Menny McCarthy pulls out her iPhone . m and says just about the most pre-^^J posterous thing she could say: "Don't mind me showing naked pictures of myself." We don't mind. Not at all.

We're sitting in a tidy bungalow Jenny uses as an office on a residential street in the San Fernando Valley. A black velour hoodie maps her curves; workout tights trace the lines of her yoga-toned legs. A photo from our cover shoot appears on her phone screen and reveals everything underneath. Forget landscapes and party balloons. This is what

the Apple Retina display was designed for.

"I'm not the girl with the ribbon holding her pinkie in her mouth, giggling," Jenny says of her latest playboy shoot, her first in nearly 10 years. "I still have that side to me, but this really strong chick came out." That rever­sal, that impulse to surprise, is part of what has made Jenny one of the most beloved, famous and atypical women alive. If you've seen any of her three previous pictorials— from ingenue Playmate of the Month (October 1993) to fierce Playmate of the Year (1994) to frisky cover girl cavorting poolside in Palm

Springs (2005)-you've seen Jenny's evo­lution as a sex symbol. If you've followed her entertainment career-from game-show host to comedienne to best-selling author-you've seen her evolution as a subverter of that label.

And today Jenny's doing it again, posing nude after becoming famous for something much more scandalous: pub­licly questioning the safety of childhood vaccines after her son, Evan, was diag­nosed with autism at the age of two. [Evan is now 10 and much improved. They have a date tonight at L.A.'s Griffith Observatory. "He's so into the universe right now," she says proudly.) Jenny is returning to entertainment in full force. She's set to host three TV shows this year: a new VH1 series she calls a modern version of Playboy After Dark; an inspirational giveaway show, Surprise With Jenny McCarthy; and NBC's reality dating competition Lowe in the Wild. She's also putting the finishing touches on her latest book, Bad Habits: Confessions of a Recov­ering Catholic. Out comes the iPhone again and Jenny shows me the cover: She's dressed like a nun, echoing her first pictorial, in which she posed in a Catholic school uniform.

When asked if being a Playmate ever comes up in conversations with her female fans, Jenny says, "Just 'You're on my husband's list.' I hear that a lot." So who's on Jenny's list? Although the gossip blogs speculate that she's dating Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher, her lips are sealed. But Jenny is happy to report that sex has gotten better in her late 30s. "This point in my life has been the most fun, sexual extravaganza," she says. "The orgasms are night-and-day better. I feel 100 billion times more sex­ual, and that comes out in this pictorial."

Jenny's return to the magazine comes at a time when the mainstream media is shocked-shocked!-by the breakout success of the best-selling "mommy porn" novel Fifty Shades of Grey. What does Jenny make of this? "It goes back to the stereotyping and confused col­lective thought that if a woman enjoys sex, she's a slut and a whore," she says. "We all have clitorises and we all have orgasms. Why the hell wouldn't we want some raunchy stuff?"

Raunch is just one part of Jenny's multifaceted public persona (she says "inspiring, dirty and funny" are the key aspects of her professional life). Which makes her all the more beguiling. "There's room for guys to be attracted to strong females," she says. "But I still feel like the girl next door."

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