Lauren Anderson posing as a Playboy Playmate in 2010. Photo / Getty Images
Lauren Anderson posing as a Playboy Playmate in 2010. Photo / Getty Images
When former Playboy Playmate Lauren Anderson stepped up to pose nude for her first ever photoshoot with the infamous men’s magazine, she blacked out.
According to the New York Post, Anderson “ ... wanted to be really skinny, and I hadn’t eaten anything.
“Fortunately, the makeup people were all there and kind of caught me before I actually fainted.”
Starring in the 2002 reality show Girl Next Door: The Search for a Playboy Centerfold, Anderson was pitted against 12 other women to compete to become Playmate of the Month.
The show’s format saw half of the women make it to the final round where they had to pose nude. And while Anderson had a scary experience due to the extreme pressure she put on herself, she beat out the other women to become Playboy’s July 2002 issue cover star. She continued to work for the magazine for 10 years.
Now 43 and the mother of two boys, Anderson features on the A&E docuseries Secrets of Playboy.
Lauren Anderson (centre), dropped out of college and worked for Playboy for 10 years. Photo / Getty Images
When she was a senior at the University of Florida, she signed up for her first job with the magazine, posing topless for the 2001 Girls of the SEC issue but said of the gig: “I kind of went as a joke just to kind of see what it was all about and they selected me … even though I said I wouldn’t do fully nude.”
The docuseries includes Anderson rewatching Girl Next Door footage from her early days with Playboy. The self-professed shy star describes footage of herself posing on all fours as cringeworthy.
“I know how insecure I was and how I was feeling at the time and that wasn’t who I was, being sexy and wearing sexy clothes,” she says.
“And so it just kind of makes me cringe.”
However, Anderson says now she “... wouldn’t change a thing because it turned me into who I am now, which is a very confident person and I embrace my body and all its flaws and before I didn’t do that, I covered it up.”
She said the magazine’s founder, Hugh Hefner, was impressed by her sweet nature.
“My mum always taught me to write thank you notes, so I actually wrote him a thank-you note, thanking him for selecting me the winner of the show and when I went back to L.A and saw him, he told me no Playmate had ever done that.”
Anderson eventually dropped out of her college degree and moved to L.A to continue a career with Playboy.
She took up jobs hosting parties and taking guests on tours of the famed Playboy mansion, recalling how “You could order food 24 hours a day and they would make you whatever you wanted.”
Denying the rumours that the parties were only full of old men, it was during a Playboy party that Anderson met her husband, baseball star Reid Brignac. The pair went on to have two children together.
Lauren Anderson with her husband, former professional baseball player Reid Brignac. Photo / Getty Images
The docuseries also covers concerns around women, including Anderson, who have posed for Playboy finding their photos on porn sites.
“It doesn’t overly bother me,” says the mother-of-two. “I never did any porn. I was never sexually active with anybody on film, so it’s really just showing your naked body, which, I did that.”
For Anderson, the negative repercussions of her Playboy career have been the labels “whore” and “bimbo” thrown at her by total strangers.
“If I have anything to say, any kind of voice at all on anything, whether it be politics or anything that’s happening … that’s the first thing people come back to,” she said. “That I’m slutty, a whore, I’m stupid, I’m a bimbo.
“That’s the worst part about Playboy for me, is the way society treats us.”
Anderson says while she’s yet to explain her former career to her sons, her eldest did happen to see a photo from her Playboy days when she was asked to sign it by a fan.
“I was not actually nude, I was covering myself,” she said. “And he looked at it and he was like, ‘Mum!’ … with this disgusted, baffled look on his face. ‘Why are you only wearing one earring?’”
