This Playboy Playmate Said Living With Hugh Hefner Was 'Very Cult-Like'
In 2001, Holly Madison moved into the Playboy Mansion as certainly one of Hugh Hefner's girlfriends. In Madison's 2015 memoir Down the Rabbit Hole, she revealed that she was going through homelessness and bank card debt back then. She was never a Playboy Playmate like most of Hef's ladies but she posed nude for Playboy's promotional issue for her fact show The Girls Next Door. There, we were given to look her life in the mansion with Hef's two other girlfriends at that time, Kendra Wilkinson and Bridget Marquardt. The display aired on E! from 2005 to 2009.
Madison quit working for Playboy in February 2009 following her cut up with the past due media massive. In the next years, she would brazenly speak about her "traumatic experience" with the corporate. As a consequence, she remains essentially the most recognized ex of the Playboy founder to this day. Here are probably the most aggravating things she's said about her time with him and within the Playboy Mansion.
Holly Madison Said Her Relationship With Hugh Hefner Was 'Very Stockholm Syndrome'
All of Hef's exes almost turned on him, especially after his dying. But Madison made essentially the most specific statements concerning the "toxic" environment the Playboy founder created. "I started to feel like I was in love with him in a very like, looking back on it, I feel like it was a very Stockholm syndrome type of thing," said the type of her "main girlfriend" position. "I just felt like I identified with him and he was complimenting me so much in the beginning, and I just started to, in my mind, blame all the other problems on the other women. Like, 'Oh, this is a miserable situation, but if these other women weren't here, it wouldn't be like that.'" She additionally admitted to to start with considering it will be a "fun … crazy experience."
Madison added that Hef made her really feel to blame about leaving. "He started lashing out at me more for really stupid things and I just realized, like, I can't be here, like, this guy is an a**hole," she told the Call Her Daddy Podcast in April 2021. "But even still, I felt guilty leaving. It took time, it took me being interested in another man before I finally was like, 'I have to pull the plug because I'm not gonna cheat.' It just goes along with all the love-bombing stuff and the 'we're gonna be together forever, and we're gonna be together the rest of my life' and blah, blah, blah. He would compare me to Belle in Beauty and Beast, like, I just came along to this castle." That Disney card is no doubt weird.
Holly Madison Said Living In The Playboy Mansion Was 'Cult-Like'
Many Playmates have spread out concerning the "strict" rules throughout the Playboy Mansion. They had a Nine PM curfew, a "strict code of conduct," and caution emails for every misconduct. But in keeping with the Girl Next Door superstar, it was so a lot more "toxic" than that. "I'd almost like locked myself into this box, in a way, which wasn't hard to do there, because it's a very cult-like atmosphere, anyway, and you're manipulated to feel that way," she said of her time in the mansion. At one level, she also felt like she'd by no means make it in the out of doors international. "My own kind of shame kept me there, too," she said.
She continued, "I couldn't really imagine a life outside of there. Like I thought, 'Okay, this is my last stop. If I want to have kids, I'm going to try.' And then when I knew that wasn't going to be a possibility with him, like we tried in vitro and everything. It didn't work. I was like, 'Okay, well, if I'm not going to have kids here, that's something I need to think about. This is really like a death sentence, in a way.'" On best of that, Madison also suffered from body dysmorphia right through her Playboy occupation. "For a recent post I was looking for pictures of myself in a bunny costume," she said in a TikTok video. "And I came across one and it reminded me of a moment in my life where I was watching a playback of myself in a fashion show and I thought, 'Oh my god, I need to lose weight.'"
She reminded her fans, "I'm sharing this because I think it might help people realize that sometimes our body dysmorphia is off the charts. I really feel like worrying about what I look like has gotten in the way of me living my best life, and being as happy as I could be, and really enjoying life as much as I could." She went on to mention that it is "ridiculous" how she as soon as idea she needed to drop extra pounds when she in fact "[looked] like a stick." She's yet to spill more information about Playboy's dark side in the 2022 documentary collection Secrets of Playboy.
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