Elle Patille could be any age from 24 to 38, with her tall, slim-hipped figure, heavily shadowed hazel eyes, high-planed nose and plump, collagen-enhanced lips that look ready to combust. Her waist-length hair is blunt cut and flat-ironed, colored in glossy highlights that range from frothy cappuccino to platinum blonde, her legs adorned with an anklet tattoo of coiled roses, clad in CN Tower–high silver stilettos.
Tugging frequently on the top of her hot pink tube dress — an expensive confection that’s part Paris Hilton, part L.A. hooker — she reveals the smooth contours of her breasts. The zipper in the back has been at half-mast all day, showcasing an exquisite spine, grey La Senza panties and a lower back tattoo of a black butterfly, eyes etched into the wings, an inspirational sentiment in sweeping cursive just below.
While this may be the definitive tramp stamp, Elle Patille is no ordinary woman. “I’m the den mother for all these girls,” she announces proudly with a gurgling laugh. “I’m so happy to be part of the Playboy family.”
I’ve been at the Sheraton Hotel since 11am, picking at my nails with a table of professional playmates working the Toronto Playboy Casting Calls, held yearly in major cities to scout for playmates, cyber girls, special edition and online models. “The girls” (as everyone calls them) extend French-tip-manicured hands bearing complimentary tote bags towards each hopeful, taking head shots and making copies of each participant’s ID to prove that they are over 18.
Mary, a part-time makeup artist and model in her own right (I am currently examining her work in the latest edition of Girls With Girls) gives out the application forms. “Here you go sweetie”, she says to each and every hopeful. “Did you log onto Playboy.com?”
Everyone is hungry but no one wants to eat. The Playmates gaze warily at the nutritional content listed on a package of cranberry trail mix, as Sudbury-native Lana Tailor, April’s Natural Beauties cover model and recent Cambrian graduate, sneaks seed crackers from a Ziploc bag. Flipping through back issues with a sorority-like enthusiasm, the Playmates pay their competition compliments. “She’s so cute, I love her boobs,” says the ski-jump nosed Anissa Holmes, who made her Playboy entrée through last year’s casting call.
“They’re really round,” says Lana, “but they seem too big for her frame…they could be real, I guess.”
“I love your boobs,” Elle says to Mary, who smiles warmly, super-touched. “These girls are all so pretty!”
The girls who want to be in Playboy enter warily on their wobbly spike heels, dressed in outfits ranging from denim miniskirts to a purple see-through jumpsuit. A J. Lo-worthy bum jiggles off to the ladies room for a touch up — “Now that’s a butt,” remarks Lana. “I want that butt but smaller.”
Heather, who slinks in at noon to meet her friend (“I didn’t think you’d come!” she screams and they hug like war veterans), has visible acne scarring, stringy blonde hair and a gold-plated name tag on her purse. A woman’s husband is instructed to wait in the lobby, as a building engineer from George Brown explains why she digs construction work.
Two Colombian sisters from Markham pose in string bikinis next to an announcer for HotOrNot.com. Ruth, who has a perfect body but a mouthful of metal, tells me that she can’t wait to get her braces off. “When I first got them I was really careful, but now I chew gum and eat popcorn.” She wants to go to school to study forensic science but could also picture herself teaching. “I thought you wanted to be a lawyer!” exclaims her sister. They can’t remember how many years they are apart. Ruth says five, but her sister thinks it’s more like three or four.
“How did the audition go?” asks the flat-topped HotOrNot dude to a snub-nosed blonde. “Well, they told me I had the best boob job they’d ever seen.” He assures her this must be a compliment.
The Playboy application form is a simple questionnaire, asking for measurements, interests (“shopping, dancing, entertainment-orientated things”), career aspirations and why the applicant should be in Playboy. “I’m not your normal 23-year-old girl,” reads one in loopy script. “I’m a single mom, full-time student that waitresses at a multi-million dollar strip club. I love horses and dancing the night away!” Another expresses her enthusiasm for the bunny logo and the "georgeous" women.
“When I think Playboy, I think hot women,” says the platinum-trussed Sally, whose participation in Carmen Electra’s Naked Women’s Wrestling League has already earned her a trip to the mansion, where she swam in the grotto and “got crazy.”
“It’s sexy sexy, not dirty sexy—classy sexy,” she says. “You’ll never believe this, but I used to be 170 pounds. I hope I get it because I think I deserve it. To work that hard, to go from 170 pounds to 115 — it boosts a woman’s confidence to be in Playboy. To tell the world — this is me, look at me!”
Sally removes the cranberry-colored silk robe each participant wears to the audition. Her curvy, flab-free body is athletic yet sexy, with bulging, bulbous breasts criss-crossed in black lingerie. Spidery stretch marks still adorn her thighs and glutes, the last remainders of her former self.
“Even when I look in the mirror I still see that old self,” Sally admits. “I feel like the guys that tell me I’m hot now are lying to me—I still feel like I weigh 170 pounds!” she exclaims, choking out a ditzy cackle. “My ex kept telling me, ‘What are you talking about—you’re so hot!’ I had to tell him, ‘No, I’m not.’”
She examines me with spackled eyelids. “You’re so cute. You know who you remind me of—Wilma from Scooby Doo!”
“Do you mean Velma?” I ask dubiously.
“Velma! Doesn’t she look like Velma from Scooby Doo?” goads Sally to the HotOrNot camera crew. The room erupts in laughter as I weakly smile.
***
Behind the locked hotel room doors, Toronto staff photographer Paul Buceta sets up his lighting for the next audition. These castings aren’t a threat to his lengthy marriage—he’s been together with his doctor wife since Grade 7. “She doesn’t get threatened,” he says dreamily. “Anyways, it’s not like I’m a gynecologist.”
Paul, with his big blue eyes and gentle mannerisms might be the most considerate man I’ve ever met — the perfect representative for Playboy’s gentlemanly facade. “You know at the end of the day, it’s work,” he admits. “You have to deliver a superior product. [Playboy] culture is a very involved thing. We’re considered the top of the line for beautiful women and nudity.”
The girls he shoots are professionals. “The kind of woman who wants to shoot for Playboy is self-assured, confident. She’s proud of herself and wants to show it, I guess. There’s validation in it — and for a woman, that’s empowering.”
Half-Hispanic, half-Peruvian Monica thinks so. A delivery girl for a Mississaugan branch of Swiss Chalet (“We love Swiss Chalet”, the photographers second), she stands unsteadily on her bejeweled white sandals, holding back nervous tears.
“I need you to sell yourself a little bit,” instructs Paul calmly. “Your history, what brought you to this moment.”
“OK,” quakes Monica, untying her robe with shaking hands.
“Just be cool, have fun, relax,” says Paul. “This is going to be a great experience for you.”
Clad in a yellow bra and thong fringed with lace, Monica has a breakable, bird-like body with undefined stomach muscles and unshapely legs. The wind machine ruffles her flowing hair until it covers her face as she poses on the lighted backdrop. “Playboy models seem so confident and ready to show their bodies,” she tells the videographer. “I’ve liked the magazine from the first time I saw it—I’ve just always really, really liked it…” She teeters to the side to display her tattoo. “I’ve even got the bunny on my lower back.”
Jeff Cohen, editor and publisher of Playboy Special Editions, including College Girls, Voluptuous Vixens, Hot Housewives and Natural Beauties, enters the room to make the final call. If a girl is Playboy material, he’ll instruct her to remove her clothes, initiating the “now spin, spin, turn, that’s beautiful, you’re wonderful” treatment I overheard while waiting outside the hotel room door. “You’re a sweet girl,” he says, patting Monica on the back as she dejectedly exits. His grandfatherly persuasion is half-assuring, half- contemptible.
“I’m making a decision for the publication,” says Cohen, when I tell him he’s the sole manufacturer of the standard of American beauty. “I’m going to be honest — with that girl we may not necessarily proceed, but perhaps we will. You never know.”
But what does Playboy want? Jeff assures me that Playboy isn’t looking for just one kind of woman. “There isn’t a set of measurements, size, or weight — I mean, it’s a well-proportioned figure, but then we look for certain characteristics that are part of the editorial theme of our issues. So, for instance, I’m always looking for college girls, I’m always looking for, as I said — hot housewives, for women who are overly endowed for voluptuous vixens, for natural beauties who just have very clean, slim, natural figures. We’re looking for young ladies who might have an unique sport or physical activity that she’s involved with.”
The magazine is distanced from Playboy’s more controversial offerings, including their 24-hour TV channel and Naughty Amateur Home Videos.
“I’m a big boy, but I’m not comfortable producing that,” he responds. “I don’t ask our photographers to do that, and the market doesn’t demand it. I think when a reader buys Playboy, he’s looking for quality. He’s looking for the best photography, the most beautiful women, the best reproduction in paper and ink. It’s the brand that identifies us, that allows us to be here, at the Sheraton.”
“We’re not pushing the bar to go any further. And I think one of the reasons that we’re successful, is that we don’t push the envelope. To me, part of the whole pornography thing is that you’ve got to push the envelope all the time. Well at some point, I don’t know where you’re gonna go.”
***
Sitting at the table in the late afternoon, the girls are still flipping through magazines, picking at their cobb salads sans avocado (it’s a trans-fat.) “Did you ever do a Girls With Girls?” asks Elle. “No, just a double for American Curves,” responds Anissa.
“This was difficult,” points out Mary when we leaf to her editorial, wrapping her arms around another spectacular, dark-skinned and naked woman with a love-lorn gaze, their firm breasts squeezed together like a vise. “Sometimes when I’m shooting, I stop thinking of the models as people — I just throw their arms and legs around so I can get their bodies to where they need to be. This was hard because my boobs are just so big compared to hers.” The Playmates exchange supportive looks.
“There’s something really natural and sensual about posing with a woman,” says Elle. “I’ve done erotic photography with male bodybuilders before, but it just doesn’t feel right.”
Anissa leans in with an apprehensive look. “I filmed a sex scene recently.”
“No!” the Playmates gasp.
“It was for HBO. You see my character, they told me that it wasn’t lovemaking, just straight pounding, you know?” says Anissa, slapping the oak table for emphasis. “Usually they wrap the guy’s penis in panty-hose so there isn’t any contact. The girls are usually naked so they have to wrap it up.”
“How many people were on set?” inquires Lana with an anxious gloom over her dewy appearance. After all, she’s only 21.
“There were 25 people in the room. The director told me it was going to be doggy-style, so she said I had to get on all fours. And my double, my clone on the show, she had to be passed out on the bed. And then we just had to kinda go at it.”
“That’s like, almost pornographic.”
“It was perverse! I came home almost in tears, like I can’t do this anymore, this is wrong, this isn’t what I want to do — I felt like I was being taken advantage of. So I had to have a long talk with Joe afterwards about everything until I felt like me again.”
The girls nod sympathetically.
“Anyways, the next day my character got stabbed in the back and I had to practice dying. I was like — I don’t know how to die. I’ve never died before!”
“Acting is so cool,” concludes Lana.
“Yeah, it’s a lot of fun.”
Paul saunters in, looking for the next participant. “Did anyone lose a lip-gloss?” he asks, holding up an expensive-looking tube of cherry red venom.
“I think that’s been there for awhile Paul,” says Anissa.
The Playmates stare at each other, bored. “I hope tomorrow is better for this,” says Elle. “I hope so because this is not good,” says Mary. “Listen, if there are any girls that come in with their girlfriends — give them a free tote bag because I don’t know how we are going to get rid of these.”
Auditioner Anne-Marie walks in, summoned personally by Cohen to return for more photos, her pendulous breasts and orange-crimson extensions illuminating the room. “We love your hair,” says Lana. “It’s so interesting.”
“Thanks,” she says. “I used to be a blonde but I wanted something different.”
“That’s it,” declares Anissa. “I am going red tomorrow.”
“Really? That would look so good on you!” gushes Lana. The girls all offer their approval and praise.
“I am going red,” she insists. “I am going red tomorrow.”
At 4pm, I take my complimentary tote bag with me to the nearest Quizno’s. Walking down Queen Street, suddenly every woman appears to be a Playmate in waiting — the middle-aged hot housewives, the bi-curious college girls, the voluptuous vixens weighing in at 170 pounds. Underneath their workday blouses and cotton t-shirts winks a tiny bejeweled bunny in the navel of every passerby. They may not seem like it, but they are Playmates, ready to coo and giggle, tossing their silky manes and grasping at their chests, secret tattoos and sinful piercings peeking out from below the confines of their uniforms, posing for the lens of whatever man wants to take their picture, waiting to be discovered. They are ready for their close up. They are ready to be empowered.