2. Bunnies Were a New Type of Escort
A former Playboy Bunny, Kathryn Leigh Scott, reflected on the culture of the Playboy Club saying, “If you think about it, Hefner started his magazine when young men were coming home from the Korean War. A lot were the first in their family to go to college. They were entering a more cosmopolitan, sophisticated world, and he, therefore, started that magazine. It was sort of a primer for young men, giving them advice on what hi-fi equipment to buy, how to take a girl out to dinner, order in a restaurant.” Hefner took dancing girls and female escorts out of the seedy underbelly of dive bars and strip clubs and made them an unobtainable icon of beauty and culture.
Hefner was mostly single-handedly responsible for ushering in this new culture of high-brow escort services. The exclusivity of the club keyholders and the wealth needed to acquire a key made doors open for those who owned the keys. Only one in every four members who received a key ever actually visited a Playboy Club, just holding the key was enough of a status symbol to be influential.