What's in a Dame

Ex-squeeze's book puts Hef in wringer

Holly Madison's "Down the Rabbit Hole" is shown.
Holly Madison's "Down the Rabbit Hole" is shown.

Holly Madison is no dumb bunny.

At least that's what the former Playboy model and one of the many former girlfriends of the magazine's founder, Hugh Hefner, wants buyers of her new tell-all Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny to believe. Yes, an actual book. Which proves Holly, now 35, already smarter than we would have given the bleach blond star of The Girls Next Door -- the oddly cutesy "reality" show about life in the Playboy Mansion on E! from 2005 to 2010 -- credit for.

She can read!

But she admits she wasn't always very good at reading people and situations, at least in her early 20s when she -- a small-town girl with big, augmented breasts who moved to Hollywood with dreams of stardom and Hooters waitress wages -- first moved into the mansion.

"While there was a part of me that acknowledged the idiocy and superficiality that surrounded me, I fell for the glamour: hook, line and sinker," she writes in the blabby summer beach read. "It took years for me to realize just how manipulated and used I had been."

Well, allowed herself to be.

In exchange for "free" room and board, a leased new car and a $1,000 weekly clothing and grooming allowance, Holly, as well as a rotating roster of six other girlfriends, lived in the stately but "neglected" mansion with old, pet-stained carpet as kept women of the then-70-something pajama-wearing, drug-offering Hefner. Girlfriends were expected to abide by a strict 9 p.m. curfew, make appearances -- like required club outings Wednesdays and Fridays -- and, uh, perform.

Or at least pretend.

"It was just a big facade," Holly writes. "No one was actually in the mood (besides Hef, I assumed) or turned on in the slightest. ... If you got close enough to any of the girls, you could hear them gossiping with one another or making fun of what was going on in front of them. If smartphones had been around then, I'm pretty sure they would have been texting or checking their Instagram when Hef wasn't looking ....

"Every red-blooded American male has no doubt fantasized about what went on in Hugh Hefner's bedroom with his harem of blond bombshells. The answer? Not a whole lot."

What there was a whole lot of: "mean girl-ing." Holly claims she was bullied by the other girlfriends who criticized her appearance and stole her possessions. And Hef was no help: "He thrived on catty drama among the women. Nothing made him feel more important than a bunch of girls 'fighting' over him."

Eventually Holly emerged as Girlfriend No. 1 when others left. While she and fellow Girls Next Door stars Bridget and Kendra always looked like they were having fun, Holly says, she felt stuck, bordering on suicidal.

So why didn't she leave?

Because this bunny "had fallen down a rabbit hole of nasty girls, a degrading love life, eroded self-esteem, and a total fear of judgment from the outside world. I felt like a failure on my mission to make something out of myself," she writes. "I had tried to rationalize my choices by convincing myself that I had fallen in love with Hef and just wanted to settle down and have a family."

She would eventually have a family, but not with Hef, who Holly says dangled a $3 million will in front of her in a last-ditch attempt to make her stay when she left the mansion in 2008 after seven years. Holly, who starred in her own E! reality show and a Vegas burlesque show, is now married with a 2-year-old daughter, and she's an owner of 1923 Bourbon and Burlesque, a speakeasy-theme club at Vegas' Mandalay Bay. Hey, 1923 -- that's almost when Hef was born!

And Hef has his family, too. In 2012, he got married to third wife and Playmate Crystal Harris, now 29 (who initially broke off the engagement days before they were to be wed). And he has four children from previous relationships.

One of his children, 23-year-old Cooper Hefner, slammed Holly's book on Twitter: "How does a person who is famous for being a gold digger paint themselves as a victim of a relationship they aggressively sought out for?"

And fellow former Hef girlfriend Kendra also has criticized Holly's memoir saying: "How could [Holly] want kids and [to] get married to him and then, next thing you know, say these types of things about Hef? It's just out of revenge, and I feel bad for Hef. But you know what? He's an amazing human being." (And here Holly was positive Kendra wouldn't read the unflattering things she wrote, telling Us Weekly: "I lived with Kendra for four years and I never saw her in the vicinity of a book, so I don't think she's going to read it.")

As for Hef, he too had words about Holly's book: "Over the course of my life I've had more than my fair share of romantic relationships with wonderful women. Many moved on to live happy, healthy, and productive lives, and I'm pleased to say remain dear friends today. Sadly, there are a few who have chosen to rewrite history in an attempt to stay in the spotlight."

Wait, "a few who have chosen to rewrite history?"

Really, there's more than one who knows how to write?

Play on, email:

jchristman@arkansasonline.com

What's in a Dame is a weekly report from the woman 'hood.

Style on 06/30/2015

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