The View From a

Centerfold Playboy models from Miss March 1954 to Miss January 1979 on meeting the male gaze then—and now.

Read the Interview miss march 1954 Dolores Del Monte age: 82 post-playboy: Public relations I had done some pinup modeling, wearing a two-piece bathing suit. On a calendar shoot, the receptionist gave me a robe and said, “When you’re finished undressing, come out.” I thought, Who’s going to see it, anyway? I’d only ever seen a calendar of a nude gal in an automotive shop. Later, I was notified that they wanted to use a photo of mine in a magazine, but I thought it was some other picture—I had worn a bathing suit that was cut all the way down past the navel. I’m so proud of that Playboy picture now. It hangs in my house and it hangs in a lot of other people’s houses. It can fit in a boudoir, a den—maybe not the living room.

Issue no. 4 of Playboy magazine, published in March 1954, featured Dolores Del Monte, an aspiring actress from Spokane who agreed to do some “figure modeling” for a calendar. Somewhere between home and the photographer’s studio, she realized it probably meant sans clothing, but it was $50 for an hour of work, so she said all right. She was in relatively exclusive company, having followed Marilyn Monroe’s debut centerfold by only a few months, but Del Monte, who got married and had three children not long after her nude pictures were taken, didn’t realize they had ended up in Playboy. Years later, her college-age son happened to be perusing a 25th-anniversary retrospective issue of the magazine, featuring thumbnails of all the centerfolds to date. He called up and said, “Mom, I’ve got some news about your past.” Her reaction was equal parts embarrassment—he was her son, after all—and pride.

In the decades that followed, the publication that pledged to highlight only the prettiest girls next door spawned an entire empire synonymous with a certain kind of louche sophistication: clubs all around the world, a Playboy jet chartered by celebrities like Elvis, the famous grotto, Hef’s silk robe. It had even somehow made bunny ears into a sexy accessory, which is one of those very strange things cultural historians in the far distant future will be unable to cogently rationalize in their treatises on the mating rituals of the 20th-century American. Helena Antonaccio, who posed in 1969, had seen a pinup from the magazine in her father’s garage when she was 5 and grew up wanting to be a Playmate. When she was told by a modeling agent she wasn’t sexy enough, Antonaccio figured out a way to make cute seem seductive. (For her Playboy spread, it involved an ice-cream cone.) “I loved the attention,” she says. “I still love attention. Especially from men.”

There is a lot of talk of ever-more-microgenerational differences these days, but if you want to get down to the brass tacks of it, the American population can more or less be divided into two groups: those who snuck their first illicit looks at flesh-for-the-ogling in print, and those of us who had the bawdy cornucopia of the internet for such endeavors. (Attention, porn profiteers: bawdycornucopia.com is not yet registered.) Playmates, in retrospect, seem awfully innocent. Del Monte says she’d never model today: “They show too much.”

But even before it had to compete with on-demand porn, Playboy had to compete in what was dubbed “The Pubic Wars” with more explicit magazines like Penthouse and Hustler. In 1972, Playboy published its first full-frontal nudity, a shot of centerfold Marilyn Cole Lownes. But to Cole Lownes—and other Playmates of that era — the photographs didn’t feel like they were about getting men off so much as they were about celebrating women. Cole Lownes’s father told her the photograph that ran in Playboy was like a Rubens painting. Using the language of the era, she now describes the whole experience “liberating.” (At the time, she wrote to her parents that she’d be a rich old lady, since “every time they change the backdrop I make $300.”)

Miss February 1976 Laura Aldridge age: 59 post-playboy: Stylist, decorator Most men weren’t interested in what was in my head. I think they just wanted to get laid. I was a Playmate, and that would be a notch in their belt. My ex-husband [Alan Aldridge, who did graphic design for the Beatles] might be the only person who didn’t think Playboy was cool. He thought Hugh Hefner exploited women. When my oldest daughter, Lily, was 10, she found a Playboy in her dad’s room, so I told her I was a Playmate. She asked if she could see it. Thirty minutes later I knocked on the door. She was watching TV. I said, “What do you think?” She said, “Oh, it’s great.” Both my daughters are supermodels—Lily is a Victoria’s Secret Angel. They’ve done it with confidence and a feeling of entitlement. Miss January 1972 Marilyn Cole Lownes age: 65 post-playboy: Journalist A friend of mine had gone to London from Portsmouth, where I was working as a clerk. She said, “There is a club. All you have to do is smile and you will earn a lot of money.” For the interview, all you had to do was bring a bikini. It was my husband [Victor Lownes, manager of the London Playboy Club, whom she later married] who spotted me in the lineup to test for Playmate. A big advantage of being a bunny girl was the fact that we had enough money in our purses to get on a plane if we felt like it. We could buy our own drinks at Trader Vic’s and go to any club we wanted to and we did it all with our money, and that gave us a sense of power and liberation. We were all promiscuous. And we were all very much our own people.

Miss June 1969 Helena Antonaccio age: 65 post-playboy: Doggie-day-care counselor After high school, I went to modeling school in New York. They thought I was too virginal, not sexy enough. But I got a job at the Playboy Club. I knew it was a stepping-stone to get into Playboy. Gosh, I didn’t even go to bunny-training school. When you go to the Playboy mansion, you get a butler and a maid and you’re driven around in a limo and somebody does your laundry. It’s great. I work out three hours a day. It’s our temple, so why not take care of it? My newest book is called Helena, the Ultimate Ageless Pinup. It’s photographs of me in my 50s and 60s. I still don’t see myself as a sexy woman, because it’s all just fantasy and smoke and mirrors. You’re in that position forever, and your back is just killing you.

All the women in these pages—who went on to become journalists, entre­­­preneurs, real-estate agents, and sexagenarian nude models; who married, divorced, and, in one case, gave birth to a Victoria’s Secret supermodel — say the Playmate title imbued them with a sense of confidence that seems more of a precursor to the sexual freedom of third-wave feminists than related to the objectification and degradation that their contemporaries saw in the magazine. “I think everyone who walked in that door to be a bunny girl or Playmate knew what they had,” says Cole Lownes. “They may not want to admit it, but I think they knew [their power].”

Today, despite the increasingly raunchy — and specific! — pornography online and the sea of look-alike blondes in Playboy (the girls-next-door-to-the-plastic-surgeon’s-office?), the classic centerfold shot is alive and well and living on the smartphone. The nude selfie lets every woman who so chooses remove the middle­­men of photographer and ­magazine. She can capture herself from whatever angle and with whatever lighting she prefers, in a photo to be kept for her own eyes as a memento, or to be sent to someone she wants to see it. She can be both object and objectifier. She has complete control.

Miss December 1979 Candace Jordan age: 60 post-playboy: Society columnist I was the valedictorian of my high school in Dupo, Illinois. I had a scholarship to St. Louis University but I was absolutely bored to death and swore I had to find a different path. A girlfriend of mine told me they were hiring at the St. Louis Playboy Club. I’m an only child so all these girls were like the sisters I never had. Feminists always say, “I can’t believe you’re objectifying yourself.” And I would say, “Do you think I was forced at gunpoint to do this centerfold? No, it was my free choice, and that’s what women’s lib is supposed to be about.” After Playboy, I worked as a model, and I was in Risky Business with Tom Cruise. I played one of the hookers. A lot of us still go to these autograph shows. Playboy fans are very, very respectful. Miss November 1975 Janet Lupo age: 64 post-playboy: Real-estate agent, entrepreneur I got a job working at the Great Gorge Playboy Club in Vernon Valley, New Jersey. It was a family place! We served a lot of children. That’s where I was asked to do the centerfold. My Playboy shoot started as only semi-nude. I was wearing grandma lingerie. And one day my robe slipped off and [photographer Pompeo Posar] kept shooting and showed me the photographs the next day and said, “See, it doesn’t look dirty or bad,” and I said, “You know, it really doesn’t. I guess we can do it that way.” Pompeo won my heart over. He talked to me as a human being. It’s a photo of myself but I just don’t feel like it’s me somehow. I just can’t explain it. I was very popular after that, that’s for sure.

The Originals Miss March 1954 Dolores Del Monte Miss June 1969 Helena Antonaccio Miss January 1972 Marilyn Cole Lownes Miss November 1975 Janet Lupo Miss February 1976 Laura Aldridge Miss December 1979 Candace Jordan

Except, of course, when hackers break into the Cloud and leak her nude photos all over the internet or the text she sends to one person gets forwarded on to others who weren’t meant to see it. When it comes to women’s bodies, people are always eager to wrest away control. In ­galleries of sext screenshot after sext screenshot, they become pinups robbed of their choice, and of their particularity — of what lends such pictures their erotic valence in the first place.

Still, for the women of Playboy who decided to step back in front of a photographer’s lens for New York, that sense of control, however illusory, was a large part of the appeal of posing — both then and now. There is, according to Playboy magazine’s official style guide, no such thing as a former Playmate. Once earned, the cultural designation as sex symbol, according to Hugh Hefner’s surprisingly embracing philosophy of beauty, is one a woman retains for life. “When you look at pictures of yourself from long ago, you see this young girl,” Cole Lownes says of her own ­centerfold. “You look into the eyes of the model, and you realize she doesn’t know what she knows now.” In these portraits: some knowledge.

Additional reporting by Ann Lemon and Lisa Mehling.

*This article appears in the October 20, 2014 issue of New York Magazine.

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STYLIng by susan winget; makeup by regina harris using m.a.c pro cosmetics; hair by Mark Anthony using Julien Farel Hair Care for Judy Casey Inc.; Set Design by Andrea Huelse at art department. on Del monte: Family Jewels Vintage (VELVET WRAP); Giambattista Valli mules from Albright Fashion Library. on aldridge: Corset and stockings by Agent Provocateur; Earrings by Dolce & Gabbana; shoes by Christian Louboutin. on cole: Behnaz Sarafpour trench coat and jewelry from albright fashion library; shoes by Jimmy Choo. on antonaccio: Lace briefs by Agent Provocateur; Lace blouse from Family Jewels Vintage; Saint Laurent hat from Albright Fashion Library; shoes by Manolo Blahnik. on jordan: Robe from Kiki de Montparnasse; Collar from Anne Fontaine; shoes by Manolo Blahnik. on LUPO: Lace peignoir by Agent Provocateur.