The Bunny Years (42 page)

E
MMA
P
ATTERSON

I
n September 1967, when I was 21, I married a musician and transferred from the Chicago Club, where I'd worked for two years, to the New York Club. I was still a Bunny when I was 33, even though 30 was considered the cutoff age. The Bunny Mother was in charge of checking Bunny Image. If a girl had crinkly skin, a crepey neck, circles under the eyes, laugh lines or crow's feet, she no longer had Bunny Image. I thought the policy was unfair because a lot of the women aged very well, but when I became a Bunny Mother in 1980, I could see the situation from management's side. A lot of Bunnies still looked good, but they had just been in the job too long and didn't have that youthful attitude and sparkle. I don't want to see a grandmother working in a Bunny-type job, but I have very mixed feelings about the age and image issues. I really do.

“Playboy tried to smooth the transition to other jobs and opportunities by picking up tuition fees for Bunnies. I took journalism courses at Hunter College because I wanted to be a food critic. I've always been interested in food and got into the catering profession through Playboy.

“I also took advantage of the opportunity to travel. The London Playboy Club was my base while I traveled through Italy, Spain and France. I stayed with Playboy until the New York Club closed for renovation in 1974. When the Club reopened, I went to the ‘re-evaluation,' bringing a bathing suit, as requested. They chose five or six veteran Bunnies out of the hundred or so who applied. I wasn't one of those chosen, and I didn't care. By that time I was an assistant restaurant manager at the Statler Hotel, but by showing up I did get my severance pay from Playboy.

“I've managed restaurants in San Francisco, London and New York, and I'm now the catering director for an off-site firm in Manhattan.

“To this day I can't figure out why I stayed so long in the job, but it was a very comfortable way of living and working. The Bunnies in New York stuck together and socialized, and some of them have remained friends for 25 to 30 years. We joke about becoming senior citizens and moving into one big nursing home together.”

Breakfast Bunny Emma, 1965.

Emma Patterson today in the kitchens of Neuman & Bogdonoff, a Manhattan off-site catering firm.

J
ODIE
B
ROCKWAY

I
thought I was sophisticated, that I could handle anything. I graduated from Boston University in 1965 and got a job in New York earning $90 a week as a trainee for the Metropolitan Life Insurance company. I was 22 years old. In those days, you went to college to party, find a husband and get married. I didn't really have my eye on a career. I figured I would probably work for two years, settle down and have kids. What I really wanted to do was go to Europe, and I needed money.

“Somehow I heard about the Bunny jobs and the great money the girls earned. I went in for an interview wearing office clothes, a knee-length brown jersey dress with a turtleneck and leather belt—and I'm sure I wore a girdle. In those days, we thought it was really tacky to walk around without a girdle. I thought I looked really sophisticated.

“The woman who interviewed me was cold and professional, not at all what I expected. ‘Fill out this form, we'll call you in a few days.' But my biggest shock came a few weeks later when the Bunny Mother called me in for a costume fitting.

“The minute I walked into the Bunny dressing room and saw the other girls, I got my first inkling that I was in another league entirely. These women—most of them dancers, models and actresses—walked around half-naked, not at all self-consciously, putting on their makeup and costumes. I was out of my element. I was terrified. Having always been so confident of myself physically, I was shaken at the thought of having to expose my body like that.

“I didn't last three weeks. Getting picked was the best part of the job. I took Bunny training and worked about nine evenings serving cocktails.

“I had thought I was so hip. From the time I was 12 I had a good body—and I never had a problem getting a date. I was not at all shy or backward, so it bowled me over that I could not handle being a Bunny. While I was in college, I had worked as a waitress during the summer months, but this was different. I can't claim that it was because I was a feminist, either. Whose consciousness was raised at that time?

“Getting by on your looks is a double-edged sword. I knew I could get what I wanted with my body, but I never respected that and I didn't feel good about it. Working as a Bunny did awaken something in me in that it was the first time I came up against something I couldn't even pretend to handle. It stopped me cold. Five years after I had worked at Playboy, I spent a summer on Fire Island writing a novel, I'm Your Rabbit, Rhonda. It was my take on Hugh Hefner and Bunnies. Forty publishers turned it down. It was pretty dreadful, but then it was one of my first writing efforts.

“At 30, I turned a corner. I married, had children and started thinking in career terms when I became an editor at Harper's Bazaar. When my son was about 4, I got into television development, first with Dick Clark Productions, then with Lorimar. I was at Hearst Entertainment for seven years. I joined NBC in 1993, and I'm now head of long-form drama and miniseries.”