Hugh Hefner’s degrading sex rituals, A-D grading & blocked pipelines
Former Playboy bunnies have revealed the reality of working at Hugh Hefner’s mansion, and it’s far from glamorous.
It was the ultimate pad thousands of young girls dreamt of ending up in.
But behind closed doors, the reality of being a Playboy Bunny at Hugh Hefner’s twisted mansion wasn’t as glamorous as portrayed on The Girls Next Door.
In the 2000s, the brand was iconic, even featuring on E! – the same network as Keeping Up With the Kardashians.
The lavish multimillion mansion, based in Los Angeles and featuring 29 rooms, was ”the place to be”, former Bunny Bridget Marquardt recalled.
“Everyone wanted to be there – every celebrity, every girl that I knew of wanted to be a part of it, wanted to be a Playmate, go to the parties,” she previously shared on a podcast.
“They had the best parties in the world there.
“It’s the place that you wanted to go and you wanted to be seen, and you wanted to be a part of that whole lifestyle.”
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Indeed, the pad, which the American publisher purchased for $US1 million ($A1.52m) in 1971, was the party spot for a list of A-listers – Leonardo DiCaprio, Jim Carrey, Cameron Diaz and George Clooney.
However, behind all the glitz and champagne, the Playboy Bunnies and Hugh’s many girlfriends and wives were stuck in a living nightmare.
Three of the most well-known Bunnies are Bridget, 52, Holly Madison, 45, and Kendra Wilkinson, 40, who’ve since been vocal about their time at the star-studded villa, where the late magazine publisher lived until his death in 2017.
From an A-D system to grade their looks to “Daddy” Hefner’s humiliating sex rituals, here’s the dark reality the former Bunnies allegedly had to endure at the Playboy Mansion.
With its fluffy carpets, pink walls and even a zoo, to the outside world the Playboy Mansion sounds like a fun-filled wonderland for adults.
But those Playmates who have spoken out about their time in the sick mansion have made it pretty clear it wasn’t all fun and sex games.
According to Holly, who was living rent-free at the pad, the mogul offered her a Quaalude when she first moved in, telling her “in the ’70s they used to call these pills ‘thigh openers”.
At first, young Holly said “no” the drugs – but couldn’t refuse later when she was told it was time to go to Hefner’s bedroom.
There, the women were expected to perform for him, and one of the other girlfriends pushed Madison towards Hefner.
“There was zero intimacy involved. No kissing, nothing,” Holly wrote.
Holly, who was 21 when she became a Playmate, offered a bleak picture of her time in her book Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny.
She claimed Hefner – who died of sepsis aged 91 in 2017 – would watch porn, smoke weed, and masturbate while his girlfriends cavorted in front of him after being ordered to dress in identical nightwear.
Holly also revealed romps with the Playboy king were certainly not something to write home about, reported The Mirror.
“It was so brief that I can’t even recall what it felt like beyond having a heavy body on top of mine.”
Former bunny Kendra Wilkinson revealed on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! that she slept with Hefner when she was 18 and he was 78.
Writing in her book Being Kendra: Cribs, Cocktails, and Getting My Sexy Back, she said: “I had to be very drunk or smoke lots of weed to survive those nights – there was no way around it.
“At about the minute mark, I pulled away and it was done. It was like a job. Clock in, clock out. It’s not like I enjoyed having sex with him.”
Hugh, who was married three times, was the man at the mansion’s helm – and according to the former Playmates, he even had an unnamed “girlfriend recruiter” who lined up the young women he brought to live with him in his Hollywood home.
When Holly was first at the mansion, she believed she’d be nothing more than a sidekick – but things quickly took a sour turn on her very first night.
Recalling the grim experience, Holly said the unidentified woman had turned to Hugh and said: “Daddy. Do you want to get the new girl?”
The Playboy millionaire – who was known as the “Godfather of the sexual revolution” – then had sex with Holly in front of the rest of his ‘girlfriends.’
She explained: “And the next thing I know he’s on top of me and I’m like, okay, so that happened.
“I was laying at the end of the bed because later on like things would get so routine like he wouldn’t move. He’d be like a bump on the log,” she added, hinting he would often lie on the bed while the girls took turns to have sex with him.
While many have since wondered why Holly didn’t leave right away, the now mum-of-one revealed she was stuck in limbo.
“But you have to understand like if I were to just leave I’m going back to my problems of not having a place to live,” Holly said.
Many wanted to make it into the villa – and those who did were subjected to shocking grading system and fat-shaming by Hugh.
To land yourself at spot at the glam pad, women also had to be of certain age – and there was a limit too.
“That was definitely a thing at Playboy,” Holly previously said.
“I feel like the unspoken cut-off age for like a Playmate was 28.”
Women and potential Bunnies were also allegedly graded from A to D after they had Polaroids taken of them.
“D – you’re not invited back, C – you’re maybe on the big party list, B – you’re on all the party lists, A – you get invited to the pool parties and stuff like that,” Holly revealed.
Kendra also revealed how the sick mogul once targeted her over he appearance, saying: “We were all in the limo on the way to a book signing with Hef when he pulled me aside. ‘Is everything okay?’ he asked.
“‘I feel fat, Hef,’ I told him. ‘Everyone is so pretty. It’s making me really insecure.’
“‘Well, you look a little bigger,’ he said honestly. ‘Maybe you can go to the gym.’”
Perhaps, it then comes as no surprise that bulimia ran rampant – in fact, the eating disorder was so widespread among the Bunnies that the villa had to be reconstructed regularly.
“There was a lot of bulimia in the mansion – to the point where people would end up in the hospital sometimes.
“To the point where the bathroom pipes had to be replaced,” Holly said.
It wasn’t just sex that was regulated – Holly soon found she was being controlled in other ways too.
The former Bunny, who was 53 years Hugh’s junior, claimed the late magazine publisher preferred the Playmates with longer hair – and once “screamed” at her after she had cut her once-long tresses.
While reflecting on her time at the Playboy Mansion in a sneak peak of A&E’s documentary series Secrets of Playboy, Holly shared the sour memory of Hugh.
She said: “I got to a point, not too far into my time there — I think it was, like, six months in — where I kind of broke under that pressure being made to feel I had to look like everyone else.
“My hair was really long naturally, and I was just like, ‘I’m gonna go chop my hair off so I can, at least, look a little different.’”
Holly then recalled Hugh’s reaction to her new hair, sharing: “I came back with short hair, and he flipped out on me.”
Bridget, who’s since engaged to film director Nick Carpenter, reiterated how tough Hugh would be on Holly during their time at the mansion.
She said: “Hef would be pretty abrasive in the way he said things to Holly.
“She came down with red lipstick one night and he flipped out and said he hated red lipstick on girls, (and told her), ‘You need to take it off right way,’ even though other people could wear red lipstick and it didn’t seem to bother him.
“It was very frustrating to live with every day — all of the drama that was going on and the tensions.
“I could definitely see that she was getting depressed and sad, and her demeanour was starting to change.”
This article was originally published on The Sun and is reproduced here with permission
Originally published as Hugh Hefner’s degrading sex rituals, A-D grading & blocked pipelines
