Editor Betty Jo Moore and Director Nadav Kander were asked to create mini films showcasing various Playboy centerfold models decades later. The results are delightful. Watch the films and read the accompanying story in this week’s New York Magazine.

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

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.

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.

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