Once a Playmate, Always a Playmate

In 2020, the notion of sex positivity has found new enthusiasm among young women who believe true bodily autonomy means having the right to enjoy and participate in what was once written off as objectification. The present-day pinup is less concerned with how she appears before the male gaze than how she feels about herself. She no longer needs photographers and publications; she can direct her own shoots and post them on Instagram. Her modeling may be a rewarding hobby or a means of amassing an empire.

This raises a question: What does this mean for PLAYBOY and its most famous franchise?

“Once a Playmate, always a Playmate” goes the motto of the nearly 800 women who have held the title. But what is a Playmate anyway? Who is she? And who has she been all along?

Not to be confused with Playboy Bunnies (for more on the Playboy Club staffers, turn to page 209) or other women who’ve posed for the magazine, the honorific is short for Playmate of the Month, the designation bestowed on those who appear in the magazine’s preeminent pictorial. It debuted in

PLAYBOY’s first issue—as “Sweetheart of the Month”—in 1953 and featured a 23-year-old Marilyn Monroe on red velvet, her perky breasts jutting out and her hips twisted to obscure her pubic area. Then came the Data Sheet, which in the past listed Playmates’ “turn-ons,” “turnoffs” and measurements—the last, I suppose, in case fans wanted to make them a fancy dress.

Depending on the eye of the beholder, these women were/are either unwitting agents of patriarchy, selling their bodies for fame and fortune (and the adoration of the men typically necessary for securing those things), or liberated trailblazers in ways some members of their gender could never imagine. Describing their origin, this magazine’s founder said, “The innovation of our Playmate pictorials was to humanize the pinup concept.”

But why should pinups require humanizing in the first place? Is it because men, the intended market for these images, don’t typically see hot naked chicks as anything but a sum of measurements? Or was it a matter of removing women from pinup settings to make the fantasy more real?

Playmate pictorials have exhibited everything from camp to romance to self-awareness, sometimes all together. The shoots found women romping in mansions or on beaches or draped on top of fancy cars. Playmates always seemed to be winking at the camera, literally and figuratively, and delighting in their nakedness. Can you really take issue with pretty pictures of happy girls having fun? Is it really objectification if the object in question appears so deeply satisfied? Even objectification must be viewed, well, objectively. Yes, many men have enjoyed reducing us women to sexual fantasies or subjecting us to brief, lusty glares, but those men can’t parlay fantasies and glares into fame and fortune, can they?

Throughout history, Playmates have also come to represent a type of beauty. Personally, I took little interest in the superstar models of the 1990s, during my childhood. Their bodies were not the ones I thought of while staring at my pudgy 13-year-old body in the mirror before vomiting whatever I’d eaten last, and they were not top of mind when I started working out a decade later. I did love Anna Nicole Smith, though, and I’ve always found the relative autonomy Playmates enjoy to be enviable. Imagine having not just a physique so universally accepted you could bare it on the pages of this magazine but the courage to do so—and be paid to do so! There’s something fascinating about the gamble of a woman who could have accessed the relative protection and spoils of beauty elsewhere. It’s a gamble that might have catapulted her into her dreams or cost her everything—just for daring to be that kind of sexual.

Alas, sexy is more complicated than beautiful and historically causes division among feminists. Some still consider sex work, stripping and pinup modeling to be irredeemable and misogynistic, positing that the male gaze is inextricable from these institutions even if they are women-owned. Others feel the ability for us to exist in those spaces is essential—or, at the very least, a necessary option.

To be allowed a space to identify as beautiful without rebuttal from your community and popular culture is a civil right granted to only a small percentage of people in this country. So when it comes to beauty standards, we must do more to expand than destroy. Instead of dismissing the “girl next door” as antiquated, the most progressive of us must reshape norms to include all complexions, all ages, all sexual identities and all body types.

That’s why this shoot is so important. We see these Playmates under two scopes: as a response to the progressiveness that demands evolution but also as godmothers to the autonomous and diverse pinups of today. One could make the case that without women like Victoria Valentino (September 1963 Playmate), Candace Collins Jordan (December 1979 Playmate), Reneé Tenison (November 1989 Playmate and first African American Playmate of the Year, in 1990), Brande Roderick (April 2000 Playmate and 2001 PMOY) and Raquel Pomplun (April 2012 Playmate and the first Mexican American PMOY, in 2013) we might not have autonomous bodies—whether tattooed, stretch-marked, pierced and/or postpartum—filling Instagram feeds.

These Playmates remind us that all bodies are worthy of public reverence, but Valentino, at the age of 77, makes the point most compellingly. Valentino’s presence is powerful because in 2014 she came forward after more than 40 years of silence to allege sexual abuse against Bill Cosby. “Why did they wait so long?” is a constant challenge to the 60-plus Cosby accusers. Women who’ve put their sexuality on display struggle to be recognized as legitimate victims of sexual violence. But Valentino expresses gratitude for having been “given this platform so I might use my voice for social good.” She’s a different sort of beautiful, perhaps more alluring than the average pert 20-something could hope to be.

Once a Playmate, always a Playmate.

That motto could variously refer to these models’ sisterhood or their fans’ adoration, which continues long after newsstand dates. Inadvertently, it also brings to mind how a woman’s past is always considered, regardless of her present. Many Playmates have achieved mainstream success all the same. Valentino is a women’s rights activist, Jordan is a columnist, Tenison owns two clothing stores, Roderick is a Realtor and Pomplun is a comedian.

“I feel sexier in my 40s than I did in my 20s,” Roderick says, “and I worry about the young women who think they can’t be powerful if nudity is involved.” For Pomplun, that’s why this shoot represents “a rebellion in the face of criticism and judgment.” Adds Jordan, “I want to show women that beauty and sexuality have no limits.”

Women publicly taking pleasure in their bodies and sexuality is still a radical act, and it becomes more radical as we age. By returning to the pages of PLAYBOY, these women do more than prove they’ve “still got it.” Perhaps here is where they truly “humanize” the pinup, reminding the world that our beauty doesn’t fade with the years; it simply changes shape. Our sexuality does not deplete with age; it evolves.

We’ve made it to a time when a richer experience of womanhood has found its place in a world once built on youth and the perceived absence of physical flaws. There may not be a consensus over what that means, but it certainly feels like progress.