Bunny Tales by Izabella St. James

 

The first Playboy Bunny memoir I read was Holly Madison's. I didn't realize that there were so many others! (This one came out like nine years earlier.) When I was in high school, there was such a fascination with Playboy. I remember seeing Playboy Bunny necklaces for sale at the store (for teen girls). Hugh Hefner was considered a sex symbol well into his old age, and no small part of that was because of the harem of women he surrounded himself with and partied with. They never really talked much in the interviews though, which always made me wonder: what was it really like?

Izabella St. James defies a lot of stereotypes. The book opens with a history of Poland in WWII and what it was like afterwards, when they were under the Iron Curtain. Her grandparents were both adversely impacted: in fact, her grandfather was sent to Auschwitz for protecting and sheltering Jews. Both of her parents inherited that legacy of pain, and when she and her parents left Poland, it was to escape the lingering shadow of Nazi Germany and Communism.

She is really smart. She went to McGill and then got a law degree from Pepperdine (although she didn't pass the bar). She speaks like four languages. The reason she became a Bunny was because attending college in California put her in close proximity with party culture when it was at its zenith and she, like many women, was curious about what living with Hefner would be like. Like many people, she also had a romanticized vision of the reality, too.

A lot of what she says in here corroborates Holly's memoir, although unlike Holly's memoir, she portrays Holly as a villain. According to Izabella, Holly was controlling and played power games to keep Hefner to herself, hoping to become his next wife or top girlfriend. She seems to have more disdain for Hefner, too, with an entire chapter kind of ridiculing what went on in the bedroom (apparently he liked having his nips sucked and wanted to watch girl on girl before finishing himself off to porn). She also talks about how weirdly cheap he was, sensitive to the fact that he knew girls wanted him for his money, and how he seemed to take pleasure in controlling and denying them that.

I think I liked this book more than DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE because she felt very pragmatic. Some readers seemed put off by her arrogance, but she just struck me as very confident and giving no shits. I do think that one of her quotes about wondering why Hefner would pay for plastic surgery but not her tuition fees is very on the nose: if he truly wanted a care-free party girl, why wouldn't he remove the obstacle of their debt woes? Instead, he seemed to prefer to cultivate insecurity-- or to allow the other girls in the mansion to do that for him, with catty infighting and rivalries. I wouldn't want to live this life and I can't imagine wanting to, but it sure is an interesting story.

St. James seems to have kind of dropped from public eye after all of this blew over. I looked her up and the last big thing she did was a 2015 Polish reality show and a pug dog rescue foundation. Hope that whatever she's up to now, she's doing well. But it's interesting that she seems to have lost her taste for fame, when so many of the Playmates have chosen to remain in the public eye.

4 out of 5 stars