The Bunny Years (39 page)
Authors: Kathryn Leigh Scott
Los Angeles, 1965. Bunny Alice Nichols makes a basket.
Bunnies Bobbi Goodley, Teddy Howard and Emma Patterson on the Bronx ski run.
Always Stand in Against the Curves. The â63 Bunny Dream Team: Jonnie, Ginger, China, Teddy, Nan, Charlotte, Carol and Lisa.
Touch football in Central Park, 1963: Bunny Ginger Gibson scored all three touchdowns against the Rinky Dinks, a group of television and advertising execs . . .
. . . when Bunny tackle Francesca Emerson lost her false eyelashes during a scrimmage, a penalty was lodged against a Rinky Dink lineman.
“Don't touch my tail!” Angel player Jim Purcell and Alice Nichols.
St. Louis Bunnies Sandy, Margie and Bunny Mother Dorothy deliver clothing for St. Francis Girls Home.
Bunny Stacy serves a gourmet meal to a Victory Memorial Hospital patient in Waukegon, Illinois.
Bunny chorus line at Carnegie Hall, 1964.
“I couldn't type. I didn't know steno. So I stuffed my bra with tissue paper, and I walked into the Playboy Club cold off the street one day in March 1964 and said, âI'd like to be a Bunny.'
“Being hired threw me into a state of shock. I had always been academic. My mother, who was a liberated woman, stressed that I should make it on my brains. Now I'd taken a job where I would be making money off my looks. It was quite alien to me. I was shy about my body and had to get used to the idea of standing half-naked while changing clothes in the Bunny dressing room. I remember picking up my costume one day and seeing a notice from the Bunny Mother on the bulletin board: âGirls, please remember to douche. You are at crotch level with the customer.' It was a new world.
“In a way, it was like coming into the theatre every night and becoming this creature in a play. Women of every background and description were thrown together in the intimate, intense atmosphere of the dressing room. Dozens of Bunnies with rollers in their hair sat half-nude, wearing black panty hose while putting on their makeup. You'd start out with this bare, pedestrian faceâat least mine wasâand try to make something of it, sharing your makeup and advice about hairstyles and false eyelashes with everyone else around you. We were always fussing with one another and sharing our innermost secrets.
“Ironically, being a Bunny got me interested in being a therapist: Your regular customers would come back time and again to unburden themselves. I'm a born
yenta
. I was always
really interested in people's stories and in helping them solve their problems. And I finally said to myself, People are giving me a few bucks in tips and blowing smoke in my face when I could be sitting in an office dispensing advice properly. I returned to school for an advanced degree in social work.
Elaine Freeman in her office at Yorkville Dialysis Center.
In what would become known as the Valentine's Day Purge, on Valentine's Day 1966, two-year veteran Bunny Elaine Freeman, a doctoral candidate in English Literature at NYU, and described in the
New York Journal-American
as “only 24 and on the slim side,” was fired by Bunny Mother Lynn Smith along with 15 other Bunnies at the behest of general manager Tony Roma, who claimed the women no longer projected the “Bunny Image.” Among them was Kelly O'Brien, a 115-pound, 5â²3” 25-year-old, who was told she was overweight and too old. “I just can't understand why they did this to usâsuddenly, cruelly and without reason,” the blonde mother of two told the press. “Maybe it's because I wouldn't join the company union they triedâunsuccessfullyâ to foist on us last year.”
“I worked six years at the St. Luke's/Roosevelt Hospital Rape Intervention and Crime Victims Program to aid victim's of sexual assault, domestic violence and crime. We provided individual and group therapy for rape survivors, trained rape crisis volunteers, testified in court cases and ran workshops in schools for students, teachers and counselors. I spent several years in outpatient mental health and now I work with hemodialysis patients.
“But every once in a while, something comes back to me from my Bunny days that involves my work as a therapist. I remember a tall, beautiful, very glamorous Bunny who told us that she could eat anything and not gain weight because she always threw up after eating. At the time I thought, âIsn't that clever? She can eat a big steak dinner and just up-chuck all those calories.' I'd never heard of bulimia back then.”
