With graduation starting to feel like a pending reality, I’ve been looking back a lot on the past four years. I realize I led a fairly uneventful existence until the Oct. 1999 issue of Playboy hit newsstands — with my photo in it. I couldn’t have predicted how much that one photo could change my life. Of course, it hasn’t all been fun and games.
When I heard Playboy was coming to campus my freshman year, I decided to try out. The impulsive move came partly from co-workers egging me on, and the rest was my remembering the tomboy image cast upon me during my formative years. Regardless, I thought it was something I would be able to laugh about later.
At my audition for the “Girls of the Pac-10” issue, I had to disrobe down to my skivvies in front of longtime Playboy photographer David Chan. Despite my nervousness, my rational side assured me I’d merely be another body on a Polaroid in the reject pile.

I was wrong. I was selected, and several days later I was standing in a bikini with four other University girls — in the backyard of a fraternity — surrounded by yelling frat guys. Back at school the following year, just weeks after the issue hit newsstands — and seemingly the coffee tables of every frat house on campus
— things began to change.
It may have been the 300-plus “fan e-mails” I received the week after the issue came out, but suddenly I had a following, although the idea that any guy (or several girls) would consider themselves my fans was ludicrous.
The e-mails didn’t really bother me, although they got old really fast. It was even flattering initially when guys would recognize me on campus. My naiveté began to wear off when I began receiving solicitations for sex, offers for “beneficial weekends” in Hawaii and even sexual threats via e-mail. When a prison inmate managed to track me down via U.S. mail, despite an unlisted phone number and address, I began to get worried.
And that sole photo also gave people ammunition to use against me, as if my appearance in the magazine somehow reduced my integrity, beliefs and all the positive things about me. Soon, my hometown was filled with rumors that I’d be appearing as a Playmate or even worse, in Hustler, complete with full frontal nudity. At first I laughed it off as small town talk, but it hurt that people would make things up for shock value.
Instead of thinking of the Playboy pictorial as some great photos taken in a popular magazine, I began to think more realistically. When I realized that there were guys out there who were masturbating to my photo, I didn’t think it was so great anymore.
I have always prided myself on my intelligence, motivation and hard work. But the unwanted attention I was receiving had nothing to do with those traits. Instead, it was derived from a mirage of my physical being, created with makeup, great photography and probably a little Photoshop. I wanted to be congratulated for good grades or my work ethic, not for how my cleavage looked.
I look back upon that Playboy issue with bittersweet feelings. I have had some feminists accuse me, directly and indirectly, of contributing to the objectification and oppression of women. I can’t really agree or disagree. I do think that I inadvertently contributed to the objectification of myself. But at the same time, the experience taught me more about myself, the type of woman I want to be — and what type I don’t want to be. And most importantly, it taught me that what I think of myself — not how others see me — is what’s important. Would I do it again? Probably not. But I don’t regret where it’s taken me, even though the path was definitely a bumpy one.