Graduating high school is cool. Graduating college is doubly cool. Earning a post-grad degree is triple cool. Earning a post-grad degree and having “Playmate of the Year” on your CV is infinitely cool. And that, friends, is Kennedy Summers in a nutshell: Infinitely cool. The modest, overachieving jack-of-all-trades sat down with Playboy to discuss her one-of-a-kind journey.
Playboy: You began modeling at 14. Did you have an eye towards becoming a Playmate?
Kennedy: No, not at all. This was back when fashion models could not pose nude or else it would wreck their whole career. If you even had a nipple implied, it was a big no.
Playboy: What kind of modeling were you doing? Runway? Magazine?
Kennedy: Everything. And I modeled all over the world: I went to Germany, I went to South Korea, I went to Turkey, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan. I had a modeling agency for every country, so if I wanted to go to, say, Bangkok, my “mother agent” would find me a contract there for three months. They’d pay for my flights and apartment, and I’d get some pocket money, which was usually not enough to live on, like 60 bucks. I spent about seven years doing that.
Playboy: Was there a direct path from international modeling to Playboy?
Kennedy: Definitely not. In 2011, I started med school, and I did that for two years, and then I moved to Chicago to do clinicals. During clinicals I was like, I really want to do one last modeling job. I’ve never been able to pose nude before. I’m going to send my photos to Playboy just as a last fun thing to do. Back then, you could submit photos through the website, and I think they’d get like four or five thousand submissions a month. Within a week, they told me they wanted me to fly out to Los Angeles and do a test shoot, and I got the job! They published me in December, and I got Playmate of the Year for 2014. I was lucky.
Playboy: Any Mansion stories?
Kennedy: [Laughs] Everybody’s got Mansion stories, but I don’t know if I can tell any of them. I will say, the Halloween parties were great, but there were some wild things that happened where I was just like, What is going on here? And there were always lots of secrets in the grotto.
Playboy: How did being Playmate of the Year impact your post-Playmate life?
Kennedy: It was supposed to be my last modeling job, but I ended up living in L.A. for five years, which was really cool. It didn’t define me, but I’m really happy I did it. Everybody kind of wants to leave their mark on the world, and [posing was] the sort of thing that will live on. The Playboy brand has been there for so long; Playmates have come and gone, but the brand will be there forever.
Playboy: Name a woman who inspires you.
Kennedy: I think Hedy Lamarr is really fascinating. She’s drop dead gorgeous and she was a famous actress, but she also invented frequency hopping, which gave us the basis for Bluetooth.
Playboy: Finally, what kind of setbacks have women in your industries faced?
Kennedy: Medical school is very sexist and very difficult, but as far as modeling goes, I think there’s always the assumption that just because you’re beautiful, you’re stupid. And maybe that’s why I’ve gone so far in my life, just to prove I’m not as dumb as I look [Laughs]. [Playmates and models] get underestimated a lot, but a [number] of the Playmates have master’s degrees. They’re smart women, they’re accomplished, and just because they wanted to do a [nude modeling] job doesn’t mean anything. If anything, it proves they were smart because they made 25 grand for taking some pictures.