Playmates And The Public

With Glamourcon spanning so many years, it's interesting to note the differences betweens the Playmates of yesterday and today. Some of the older Playmates you meet here are more down to earth and engaging. They don't come across as untouchable goddesses, but more like the cool friends you had in college who also happened to be really hot.

Back in the day, the centerfold data sheets used to list a Playmate's favorite movies and authors. I mentioned this to Charlotte Kemp, who was a Playmate of the Month for December 1982, and she said her favorite author was Robert Ludlum. As far as movies go, we talked about the demise of drive-in theaters. They were on their last legs when Kemp was a centerfold, and she fondly recalled going to them with a gang of friends, and sharing a keg they'd sneak in the trunk.

It was also interesting to talk to Cynthia Myers, who was a Playmate back in the late sixties: December 1968, to be exact. When she was finishing up high school, a large percentage of her friends were being shipped off to Vietnam. She told me she wanted to go over and help entertain the troops, but her safety couldn't be guaranteed.

Many of the models I've met at Glamourcon over the years, both older and younger, were pretty cool, and more approachable than I thought they'd be. Of course, a lot of them want you to buy their memorabilia; you'll often see them sitting around bored, waiting for someone to actually purchase their stuff, kind of like the scene in "This is Spinal Tap" where no one shows up to the record signing.

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And though they'll never say it within a reporter's ear-shot, it's pretty clear that some of the people who approach these girls must make their skin crawl. I overheard one out-of-shape, bespeckled geek telling a model that he created a shrine for her on the Internet, and had even made a chocolate sculpture of her! It sounded a little icky, but ultimately was probably harmless - or at least, we think it's harmless.

The fans who come to Glamourcon don't give off that creepy, dangerous Paul Snider kind of vibe (Snider was the sleazy Svengali who murdered 1980 Playmate of the Year Dorothy Stratten). They seem more innocent, and you don't get the impression that they want to hurt the women they can't get. They don't seem under any delusions they're "all that" - they're all too aware of being much too average-looking and socially shy to approach women like this in real life, so they admire them from a distance, like great works of art.

In all the conventions like these that I've attended, I've never seen anyone get fresh or overstep the boundaries. Playboy Playmate of the Month March 2001 Miriam Gonzalez says she's never had any problems with her fans. "I think they see I wouldn't put up with that," and considering her no nonsense vibe, it wouldn't be hard to imagine her bitch-slapping someone silly if they got out of line. Of course, wherever there are beautiful women, there are usually sleazy, reptilian, pimp daddy kinds of guys trying whatever scam they can to get into their pants. But in talking with the women at this last Glamourcon, I got the impression that many of them are hip to that game.

On Sirius Satellite Radio, August 2004 Playmate Pilar Lastra has a show dubbed "The Playmate Hour," with Gonzalez. Recently Lastra told a story about some guy trying to date her who claimed he was some big shot baseball player, but turned out to be a major league bullshitter - it's easier to check these things out since the advent of Google. You'd think that hot women go through similar experiences all the time, so I asked Gonzalez how much crap like that she has to go through in her life. "Not enough!" she joked.