Deconstructing Woman

This article was originally published under a slightly different format and title by Suite101 in 2001. Reprinted with permission.

Flipping through the pages of your family’s Sears catalogue you may be surprised to discover that there is now an entire page devoted to selling Playboy products. The Playboy Bunny insignia can now be found on wallets, t-shirts, purses, belts, key chains, and more. In a rather clever promotional campaign initiated by the Hefner camp, the Playboy Bunny has returned as a highly marketable image. As ever, the trademark asserts that the woman (or girl) wearing the Bunny is sexy, playful and fun. But is this or has this ever been an accurate representation of the Playboy Bunny lifestyle? Did Playboy Bunnies ever really have fun?

In 1963, Gloria Steinem shocked the publishing world when she went undercover and posed as a Playboy Bunny for the New York City Playboy Club.¹  While there, she documented her brief tenure as an elusive Bunny and discovered many unknown facts about the women working in Hugh Hefner’s infamous clubs.  She noted, in particular, the rigorous demands of the job and the rather obvious sexualization of the women.

The sexualization of the Bunny began with the clubs’ disturbing hiring policies where the hopeful Bunny was required to list her measurements on the application form and later would be forced to succumb to an intrusive internal exam by a company doctor.  Once hired, she would then be required to wear a constrictive costume (or suit) designed to delight the lusty male customers hoping to possess the sexual ideal she represented.

The Bunny suit, which is probably the most recognized feature of the Bunny image from her playful ears to fluffy cottontail, was cut so high and sewn so tightly that the Bunny’s hip bones were bare and the act of sneezing often broke the zipper.  As a result, Bunnies with colds often could not work and had to be replaced.  Bunnies also wore three-inch heels, fake eyelashes and dark lipstick. After all, Bunnies could be fired for looking too pale. They teased their hair and stuffed their bosoms with tissue, maxi pads, scarves, gym socks, or anything else they could find. On cold nights, with temperatures well below zero, Coat-Check Bunnies were given a bit of fluff to cover only their shoulders ensuring that their bosoms were left naked and visible to the customers’ eyes regardless of the freezing temperatures. At the end of the evening a typical Bunny could expect her feet to be swollen to triple their regular size, indentations around her rib cage and zipper welts on her spine.  She might even find her legs numb above the knee.

But the costume wasn’t the only hardship the Bunny endured.  She was required to smile all night long, act interested in every male customer, and appear friendly yet unavailable. She had to learn and practice both the Bunny stance and the Bunny dip. She endured groping and pathetic come-ons in typical Bunny style.  She was not to have a past, any convictions or individuality. In fact, Bunnies were instructed by their supervisors to act as if they had no individual background or history and to simply project the “Bunny image.”

And what is the Bunny image, you might ask? Well, at the time a Bunny was hailed as  “…beautiful, desirable…the most envied girl in America.” In an interview with journalist Oriana Fallaci in 1967, Hugh Hefner explained that “The bunny, in America has a sexual meaning, and I chose it because it’s a fresh animal, shy, vivacious, jumping - sexy…” Yet when Gloria Steinem told a group of Bunnies she had worked as a secretary, one Bunny replied, “If you can type, what the hell do you want to be a Bunny for?”²

Why indeed? The Bunny lifestyle certainly never offered women anything meaningful. After all, the Bunny was not created for women but for men. Women were merely the bodies in the suit. Yet as impossible as it may be to believe, the once disgraced Bunny has returned.  She has been recreated and marketed to young women as a sign of glamour, independence and admiration.  Not unlike the way she was once marketed to women forty years ago.  The only difference is that today we should know better.  Somehow, we have forgotten that there was nothing glamorous about the Bunny.  We have forgotten that Bunnies often worked in intolerable conditions and rarely attained the “lifestyle” they were promised.  We have forgotten that the Bunny was nothing but a pornographic image created for the sexual desires and delight of wealthy men. 

Remarkably, however, it is women who have largely re-embraced her.  Like the lusty male patrons of the Playboy Clubs, we too have bought a false sexual ideal.  High school girls proudly display the Bunny, paying homage to an oppressive past and reclaiming the false illusion of power marketed to the women before them.  By embracing the Bunny today, a girl is saying that she is sexy, playful, desirable, fun. Forty years ago, young girls and women were presented with this false ideal and it left many of them victimized, objectified and frustrated.  Forty years later, the Bunny, with all her lies and innuendo, has returned to leave her mark once again.

Copyright © 2007, C. C. Ley

References

1 Gloria Steinem (1983).  I Was A Playboy Bunny.  Outrageous Acts & Everyday Rebellions.  St. Edmundsbury Press, Bury St. Edmonds, Suffolk: Great Britain. All information regarding the working conditions of the Playboy Bunnies was taken from this article.

2 Both unidentified quotes in this paragraph were taken from article referenced above.