The Real Girls Next Door
The following blog entry is an anonymous narrative submitted by a survivor of trafficking and former Grace House Resident.
Like many young girls in the early 2000s, I loved reality television and watched The Girls Next Door religiously. The lives of Holly, Bridget, and Kendra, the three girlfriends of Playboy Executive, Hugh Hefner, seemed really glamorous and exciting. They lived in a beautiful home with butlers and maids. They had a 24-hour kitchen with personal chefs. They had their own makeup artists and hairstylists and always went shopping together. They went on amazing dates to fancy restaurants and nightclubs. Their boyfriend, “Hef,” did lots of charity work, loved animals, and seemed old fashioned compared to the adult nature of his line of business. The fact that the girls were nude models was secondary to the fact that they lived a really enchanted life.
It’s heartbreaking now, in 2022, to learn about all the details that the show didn’t depict. We didn’t know about the mandatory sex parties. We didn’t know about the revenge porn. We didn’t even know that it wasn’t a choice whether or not the girls were going to appear on that show, but now it seems obvious why: The Girls Next Door was Playboy’s way of presenting a wholesome image to the public, when the reality was drastically more exploitative than anyone on the outside knew.
Again, I was heavily influenced by this show, and it did normalize a few twisted ideals to me at an impressionable age. For one, the cast’s polyamorous relationship made me think it was normal for my boyfriend to have other girlfriends, as was very common in sexual exploitation settings. Most significantly, it led me to believe that the sex industry was fun and cool and glamorous. As a young adult when I was trafficked, I didn’t realize how deep I was in exploitation, because I had seen a clear example of a boyfriend who exploited his girlfriends’ sexuality for profit, and it seemed consensual and, well, normal. Weren’t the girls benefitting from the relationship, too?
However, many survivors whom I have met through Grace House, and other groups in San Diego, will tell you that the sex industry is not glamorous. Maybe moments of it can seem exciting and intriguing at first, but often what follows is violence, addiction and other unhealthy coping habits, and post-traumatic stress. If you are lucky enough to escape with your life, you will still spend many years looking over your shoulder, or trying to undo toxic ways of thinking that can cause most people problems functioning in everyday life. Even in the case of Holly Madison, it is interesting that she waited to do this docuseries until after Hugh Hefner has passed away. To me, that means that she was fearful of him or his power, or that she was actually aggressively intimidated to keep quiet.
To put the sex industry into perspective, it is helpful to look at the facts:
75% of survivors have attempted suicide at least once in their lifetime.* Madison has described a few different incidences of suicide ideation while living in the Playboy Mansion.
39% of sexually exploited individuals were recruited by an intimate partner.* Madison herself developed a romantic relationship with Hefner long before she appeared in Playboy or was subjected to revenge porn.
The sex industry is an extremely lucrative business. In San Diego alone, profits from illegal sex acts can reach as high as $810 million per year. ** This shows that there is a significant motivation to coerce one or many into sexual exploitation.
I do not fault Holly, Bridget, or Kendra for this at all. To me, they are also survivors of sexual exploitation and were doing what they had to do to keep their heads above water in a toxic environment. It just goes to show that whenever the sex industry presents itself as wholesome or glamorous, we should always take it with a grain of salt, for there is so much we don’t see.
Sources:
* From PolarisProject.org
** From The Nature and Extent of Gang Involvement in Sex Trafficking in San Diego County, by Ami Carpenter, PhD, and Jamie Gates, PhD, Point Loma Nazarene University Center for Justice Reform, 2019.
