Visible vestiges of Crystal Hefner's days as a Playboy Playmate have all but disappeared. The snowy blonde hair that once characterized Hefner, the third and final wife of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, has become more dirty blonde. Revealing outfits have been swapped for sensible pieces like beige cardigans.
But a closer look reveals a woman who is still acclimating to life outside the infamous Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, which she vacated about seven years ago, shortly after Hefner's death in 2017.
On a recent afternoon, Hefner leaned on a pink banquette at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan. She seemed thoughtful: It had been less than an hour since she read an excerpt from her new memoir, “Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself,” to a group of strangers for the first time.
Hefner, 37, said she is still adjusting to life outside the mansion, where she lived for nearly a decade and where “she was rewarded for being small.” She has been trying to rid herself of the conditioning she endured within her luxurious walls. “Coming to power is a work in progress,” she said.
“Only Say Good Things,” which will be released on January 23, is a step toward achieving that power. In the book, Ms. Hefner reexamines her initiation into the Playboy world; she details the objectification and misogyny she said she experienced with Mr. Hefner; and she draws out the trauma she's still processing.
“At that point,” he said, “I must have been brainwashed or something.”
Ms. Hefner met Mr. Hefner at a Halloween party in 2008 at the mansion. The farm offered a glimpse of how the 1 percent lived, she writes in the book, and she wanted to be a part of it. She, then 21, was one of many attendees who revealed costumes of French maids whom she invited to her room for group sex as the party wound down.
He soon learned that visits to the mansion often involved a “trip to the bedroom at the end of the night,” he writes in his memoirs. Back then she believed it was worth it.
Ms. Hefner moved into the mansion two weeks after the Halloween party and began dating Mr. Hefner about two years after they met. (At the time, Hefner was still married to his second wife, Kimberley Conrad, but the two were living separately.)
As his girlfriend and later his wife, Hefner had to routinely maintain her appearance: if she gained any weight, he would tell her to “tone up,” she writes in the book, and if her natural brown hair showed, he would tell her to make it blonder.
She writes about how she and other friends who lived in the mansion received a weekly payment of around $1,000 and how they had a strict curfew disguised as a schedule. Breaking it risked Hefner having a seizure.
Ms. Hefner said she made several attempts to escape from the mansion when she was one of Mr. Hefner's girlfriends. She once made it: she told the property's security guards that she needed to buy tampons and she went to live with a friend who lived nearby. But she moved back into the mansion a year later, she said, because she had Stockholm syndrome.
“I just felt, 'Oh, this is my destiny.' This is where I'm supposed to be,'” she said. “I was 25 years old.”
Hefner said she often indulged his desires at the expense of her own because she feared being replaced by someone younger, happier, blonder and with “bigger breasts.”
She said those concerns were eased slightly by their wedding in 2012, when she was 26 and he was 86. (Hefner's second marriage to Conrad ended in 2010 after an 11-year separation; his first marriage, to Mildred Williams, to whom he met during his university years, ended in divorce in 1959).
His union with Ms. Hefner was the type that became the subject of tabloid press. Some dismissed her as a “gold digger” and a “dumb blonde,” reducing her to nothing more than another notch on the belt of a man known for dating and marrying younger women.
She did not feel comfortable having sex alone with Mr. Hefner, she writes in the book, so she often invited a friend to join them. By 2014, the sex had ceased due to Mr. Hefner's age and declining health. At home, Ella Hefner began to become more of a caregiver than a companion: she described herself as “the loving, supportive wife in public” and “the nurse who carries her bedpan at night.”
When he died of cardiac arrest at age 91, she initially protected his reputation. She writes about how, before he died, Hefner made her promise that he would “only say good things.”
Hefner's determination to keep that promise began to fade in 2019, he said, when he began therapy after watching “Finding Neverland,” the documentary detailing sexual abuse allegations by two men who had long-term relationships with Michael Jackson.
Thinking back on their marriage now, Hefner said, evokes feelings of regret and disgust. She is still learning how to build healthy relationships and break the codependent tendencies she developed during her relationship with Mr. Hefner.
“When I started dating again, it was hard,” she said, “because with Hef, he just wanted me by his side all the time.”
Only recently, he said with a nervous laugh, did he learn the concept of setting boundaries. “I didn't have any when I was at the mansion,” she said. “If you wanted to be there, you couldn't have limits.”
Hefner said Hefner could be emotionally abusive and some of his other ex-lovers have made similar accusations. In 2015, Holly Madison, a former girlfriend of Mr. Hefner, published a memoir in which she recounted the strict rules he had to follow at the Playboy Mansion and the resulting mental health problems he experienced. Many Playmates were upset about the book when it came out, Hefner said, including herself.
But now? “I look at it in a completely different way,” she said.
Before his death, Mr. Hefner had denied Ms. Madison's allegations and others made against him. After Madison published her book, he said in a statement to People magazine that he remained friends with many of his ex-girlfriends, but that some “have chosen to rewrite history in an attempt to remain at the center.” of attention”.
The PLBY Group, Playboy's parent company, has in recent years re-addressed the allegations against Hefner. Ahead of the 2022 premiere of the A&E docuseries “Secrets of Playboy,” the group published an open letter on Medium acknowledging “allegations of abhorrent actions by Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and others.”
“We trust and validate women and their stories, and we strongly support those who have come forward to share their experiences,” the letter said. (PLBY Group did not respond to requests for comment for this story.)
Jennifer Saginor, who wrote a book about her regular visits to the Playboy Mansion with her father, a former doctor to Mr. Hefner, described Ms. Hefner and other women who lived and spent time there, most of whom were young , thin, blonde and white, as “hired accessories” who helped Hefner cultivate a certain image.
Saginor, who met Hefner through their shared connection to the Playboy universe, said she had doubts that Hefner and Hefner's other lovers didn't know what they were “signing up for” by seeking relationships with him.
Ms. Hefner said her life now is a radical change from her days at the mansion. She buys and sells rental properties to make a living and, for the past year, she commutes between Los Angeles, where she lives, and Hawaii, where she bought a farm.
She's not sure if Los Angeles will be her “forever place,” she said, because she likes the idea of living “somewhere that's a little less superficial.”
