I was a child of the 2000s and I remember looking at Playboy as if it was this incredible thing that everyone wanted to be. To be a blonde bombshell model that lived in a mansion and had all this money and fame sounded incredible, I even had a playboy pencil case for school and a playboy belly ring that I wore with pride until the bunny fell off. Yet as you get older you start to realise the dark underbelly of what you thought was a wondrous playground of fun and fantasy and this documentary cements all your deepest worries about what these women went through.

Secrets of Playboy is a 12 part documentary that constantly one ups itself as the show goes on. When you first look at it and see it’s 12 episodes you do wonder how that amount of time can be filled with anything but filler and fluff, yet when you actually watch the show, the deeper and deeper it gets the more shocking it gets and it just seems to keep one upping itself with what is being told, from women being sexually assaulted to known peadophiles groping and taking advantage of these women and even animals being involved in activities, it’s an absolute horror of a scandal that really makes you wonder how Playboy got to continue for so long.

In this documentary we get to speak to women from all different decades of Playboy, from the ones who were there at the very beginning to ones who have only recently left, and they all have different stories of what happened to them but also the tales seem to always intertwine and come down to one god-like figure which is Hugh Hefner himself. Hefner was a man who had everything that you can dream of, the money, the fame, the girls, everything and yet because of that he could be easily bored and so it’s no wonder that things got to such a drastic conclusion at the mansion because, when you do have everything you are constantly expanding your morals to keep things exciting, but how far can that really go?

One aspect that terrified me was a woman who was Hefner’s girlfriend for many years and many thought she would be the perfect bride for him was with him one evening when he explained to her what snuff films were and how he wanted to create one, and that’s plain murder! That’s straight up murder and torture and he was willing to commit it because his life had reached such a height where normal excitement didn’t give him that thrill anymore, he needed to do something so drastic to get that satisfaction and it’s terrifying to think, yes these women are coming out now and speaking up, but what more is left under the surface untouched?

This documentary completely changed how I viewed Playboy and how I support these sorts of industries, so often we see within modelling women being taken advantage of because they are seen as dolls, they aren’t seen as actual human beings with thoughts and feelings but as a body that can model clothes or underwear or whatever it might be. As more and more come out of the woodwork I do hope that these examples of how horrific this world can be becomes the reason that it has to change, and I think when you look at other modelling scenarios like Victoria Secret and other pornographic magazines, how will this change the face of modelling and hopefully will it change it for good?

What do you think of Secrets of Playboy?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding