The Cost of Bunny-hood
There are prices too high to pay…

It was big news in the metropolitan Philadelphia area, Playboy was coming to Atlantic City. It was exciting news for this particular woman who’d grown up perusing the pages of her father’s monthly issue of Playboy, a young girl who’d been introduced far too early to her own sexuality.
“Darn,” I thought to myself, “I’m over the hill where that sort of thing’s concerned… but… I look good…”
Casually, I mentioned it to my husband, whose face lit up as if someone had plugged him into a socket. “You should go,” he blurted out enthusiastically. “You should absolutely go.”
I hadn’t considered, prior to his surprising response, that being married to a Playboy Bunny might be even more a feather in his cap than it would in mine, a 35 year old mother of two.
I hadn’t taken down any of the pertinent information from the news story but that turned out not to be a problem as the event was reported on TV news so frequently that you almost couldn’t avoid it. Newscasters gleefully listed times, dates, and wardrobe requirements: high heels, stockings and a bathing suit. Age was never mentioned.
I got myself together and headed to the nearest venue the next day.
The telegram arrived about two week later: me, my long legs, and my tiny tits were in. Training began not too long afterwards. (Legs, as it turned out, were the deciding factor. You can manipulate breasts, but a leg is what it is.)
Training was arduous. I’d never imagined that there was so much to learn about cocktails. Then came mastering the infamous “bunny dip” for serving low tables: back straight, legs together, then knees bend. The back always remains straight.
The bunnies had come from all over. One, who’d been a bunny in the Chicago club, had moved from Cincinnati. Her Bunny Name was Fadja. We all had to have Bunny Names; your actual name showed up only on your paycheck for privacy reasons. Fadja was about 5’2” tall without the required three-inch heels. She had chosen the name because it translated in some language to meaning “good luck” or “good fortune,” or something along those lines. Fadja had a goal, and that goal was to marry a wealthy foreigner. She was very open about her mission and about the fact that she was “a kept woman.” She had all the freedom she wanted during the week but her week-ends were devoted to the man who paid the bills.
The bunny uniform was so uniform that their wardrobe department followed a rule very similar to one of the famous rules of carpentry: “If it won’t fit… force it.” The uniform was only, in the most general way, fitted to the bunny. The bunny’s job was to submit to the “ideal” of a tiny waist and breast tissue that presented a sort of ‘poofiness’, a similarity to a loaf of bread just risen. If you had been only modestly gifted in the breast department, men’s athletic socks or pantyhose were the best for propping up what you had in order to meet the required visual standards.
If, however, your breasts were too large, they’d be incorporated into the boned body of the uniform itself… whatever that might take. Fadja’s breasts were… immense. I had never seen, before or since, breasts that… well… in her case, long.
I remembered, when I was a kid, seeing, in both my father’s magazines and in National Geographic, women with very large breasts. The breasts were many different shapes, but all were recognizable as breasts; Fadjas were not. She had been a bunny for so long that what she was left with were more like lengthy flaps of thick skin, hanging almost to her pudenda.
It was among the most heartbreaking sights I have ever seen. This lovely young woman had sacrificed her very body in an attempt to attract a man of wealth who would support her in some imagined lifestyle that she had never experienced. She had been so seduced by money and power that she had lost all personal integrity.
Fadja wised up before it was too late, though. She left Playboy not long after I left, (also for uniform-related health issues). She went back to Cincinnati to marry a guy who’d been in love with her for years, ironically, a milkman.
