The Bunny Years (43 page)

I
n art school, I met a college guy who got drafted. President Kennedy had made married men exempt so my friend asked me to marry him to keep him out of Vietnam. I did it to help him out. I think we were together for about a year before we split up. I knew I was at a crossroads.

“In 1963, I moved to New York and got a job as a stewardess with TWA. I was living with five other girls in an apartment, all of us broke. The pay was low, but out of our earnings we had to buy our own uniforms—$400 for the winter coat and suit, and $25 for the shoes. The regulations were also getting under my skin: Hair couldn't touch our collars, and we were supposed to wear girdles. There were stipulations about being married, and we had to sign a document stating that at age 30 we would retire. When I was on standby, I would often get a call in the middle of the night for a 6 a.m. flight. I was unhappy enough in the job, but when four stewardesses I had trained with and two pilots I'd worked with were all killed in a plane crash, I started thinking about other job options. Shortly after I had an emergency on one of my own flights, I quit.

“In 1966, I applied at Playboy, a dream job and a definite improvement over the airlines. I could make a hundred dollars a night in cash. I did not have to pay for my Bunny uniform, only for the dry cleaning. In an airplane, if a passenger got unruly, you were stuck with him for the rest of the flight, but if a Keyholder got out of line, you just called a room director to bail you out. Really, I never understood why people thought Bunnies were exploited.

“But, of course, Bunnies were supposed to ‘retire' gracefully, too. A good many of us were on the verge of turning 30 at the time of the strike. I wasn't at all interested in
union matters, but I thought since I was on the cusp of 30, I'd better get on the picket line. Besides, I was truly angered by the age cutoff; I was starting to look my best at age 30.

Linda is a portrait artist and lives in a California beach house with her husband.

“Although we managed to change the policy so that Bunny Image wasn't based on age alone, I really couldn't fault the airlines or the Playboy Club at the time for wanting to fire women who gained weight or had a sloppy appearance. Part of the job description was ‘looking good.' I once had an accident that left a small gash on my lip and I was afraid I would be suspended, but Jadee, bless her, said, ‘I don't see a thing; go out on the floor.'

“If I had any regrets about my seven years as a Bunny, it would be that I didn't take advantage of Playboy's tuition program or invest my money. Other Bunnies were going to school, setting up businesses or launching careers. But I never looked ahead. I'm a let's-see-what-happens sort of person, one of the flaky ones.

“I left in 1973, when my husband and I moved to Marblehead, Massachusetts. I set up a studio and began to paint, doing portraits on commission.”

I
was in two totally different worlds: a per diem substitute teacher by day and a Bunny at night. It was hard enough, but because I was short, had long hair down to my thighs and wore no makeup, the Playboy Club got calls and letters complaining that I was underage. In fact, I was 25 years old, and a graduate of NYU. Jadee, the Bunny Mother, finally had to ask me to give her a copy of my birth certificate to keep on file.

“In the autumn of 1965, I gave notice to Playboy so I could begin teaching full-time. Jadee asked, ‘Why not stay on and work weekends?' I've always loved animals, and my avocation at the time was finding homes for cats. I had discovered that the Playboy Club was a great source for placing cats with customers. Besides, I liked working weekends and making extra money.

Carol Wilbourne, with “Jack,” is a consultant for the New York Humane Society, author of The Inner Cat, Cat Talk: What Your Cat Is Trying to Tell You and columnist (“Cats on the Couch”) for Cat Fancy magazine.

“I stayed more than seven years, through marriage, divorce, remarriage and a bicoastal Malibu/Manhattan lifestyle. Every time I left New York, Jadee would say, ‘We don't care how long you're away as long as you come back to us.' In 1973, my second husband, a veterinarian, and I decided to open New York's first cat hospital in Greenwich Village. It was an unusual clinic that provided feline psychological treatment as well as physical care.”

“The problems inside the Club only reflected what was happening outside. The times were changing radically in the early '70s. We were a favorite target and constantly in the news. A reporter for an upstate New York radio station wanted to interview the Bunnies. I could see that his attitude was distinctly negative, that he was there to poke fun at the ‘dumb Bunnies.' I asked him to tell me the sorts of questions he intended to ask, and he very smugly showed me his list. It comprised the usual round of fatuous pseudo-intellectual questions, dripping with sexual innuendo and designed to make the girls sound foolish no matter how they answered.

“To his surprise, I told him that I approved the questions and insisted he interview each Bunny as she arrived for work. He stared at me and waited for the other shoe to drop. I smiled and said, ‘That's it. None of the girls will have any advance warning. Go ahead. Ask your questions.' He stood in the hallway outside the dressing room and asked his questions. Every Bunny had a sharp answer, an interesting opinion that reflected some thought, a little wit and some humor—after all, these were women who were used to talking to strangers trying to put them on. He came into my office a while later and said, ‘I owe you an apology.' I told him, ‘No, you owe the girls an apology. These are women who talk to 90 people a night and then go to college or pursue other careers during the day. Do you think we store them in a closet and bring them out at night to show their boobs?'

A protester pickets the Detroit Club.

“The Women's Libbers, as they were called, also started to picket the Club around this time. These were very tough-looking women who would picket every day and scream at the Bunnies arriving for work: ‘What's wrong with you? You're being used!' The Bunnies would try to brush them off with, ‘I'm here by choice. What's wrong with that?' Sometimes, when I arrived for work in the morning and they were shouting at me, I'd try to talk with them. I'd point out that the Bunnies weren't dragged into the Club in chains. We didn't lock them in. ‘They are earning a living, so leave them alone.' The libbers were outraged that I, a woman, would attempt to justify working at Playboy to another female.

“The general manager, Mario Staub, called me into his office one morning to tell me that the libbers had climbed up on the roof the night before and thrown a banner over the side of the Club.

“ ‘How did this happen? How did they get up on the roof?' he asked.

“‘How would I know?' I replied. ‘Do you think I stay here all night?'

“He put me in charge of finding out and told me he didn't want it
happening again. I had no idea then or later how they did it. Maybe it was an ‘inside job.' Because of the type of women picketing the Club and their militant stand, you had to keep a sense of humor. Yet, there were many things that warranted change and, of course, one could argue the issues of sexual exploitation.

“The gender discrimination issues at that time also prompted several guys to come in for Bunny interviews. Some of them were transvestites, others just men pushing the parameters of hiring guidelines. A man I later discovered was a reporter came in and asked if I would give him a Bunny application. I said of course and set up an interview. I told him I would have to see him in the full costume and high heels before I could determine if he had the Bunny Image. He balked.

Elizabeth Yee, managing director of VEA New York, a quarterly Spanish language magazine.

“Playboy had an incredibly long run. But, in the course of time, styles changed in food, entertainment, décor—and the whole idea of a pretty girl wearing ears, a tail and high heels while serving you dinner became passé. I worked at the New York Playboy Club from its opening in 1962 until the Club closed for renovation in 1974; six years as a Bunny and six years as a Bunny Mother. It was time to move on. So many things in our society were changing.”

—Jadee Yee, 1997