It’s officially the week of Halloween, and soon we’re about to see girls dressed as the iconic Playboy Bunny. But what’s the history behind what seems to be the college girls’ favorite costume? More importantly, how has it been reclaimed from what has been seen as a sex symbol for men since the beginning of the bunny?
While the first cover girl to be featured in Playboy magazine was the icon herself, Marilyn Monroe, she didn’t appear in the iconic bunny costume that we’ve associated with the name Playboy. The actual Playboy Bunny didn’t debut until 1960 with the opening of Hugh Hefner’s first Playboy Club in Chicago. The costume was worn by the cocktail waitresses who were walking around the club and serving the guests. Yet, it wasn’t always going to be women in the role of the bunny; as one of the owners of the clubs, Victor Lownes has said on multiple occasions that the bunny was originally a male symbol. It wasn’t until Lownes’ girlfriend that the rabbit mascot was used as the inspiration for the costume, and the idea was brought to the table; her mother even stitched the prototype of the first costume. Changing the “playboy” of the animal kingdom to a sex symbol skyrocketed the success of Hugh Hefner’s clubs.Â
The costume that was seen on opening night was not the original because when it was first modeled by Hefner’s girlfriend at the time, it was described as underwhelming by Hefner; it had the ears and the tail, yes, but neither the collar nor the cufflinks that would become signature to the look. Not only that, but he thought it resembled too much of a swimsuit and wanted it to reveal more of the thigh. And, by 1961, the rest of the iconic costume was formed with the addition of the collar and cufflinks. In 1969, we saw a small switch from the yarn tail that was being used to the fluffy plush one we see in the costumes now.Â
Each new bunny was given two uniforms that were modified to fit what was seen as their best features. These uniforms were so tight that if a girl bent the wrong way, fabric could tear or a button would fly off. This led to something called the “bunny bend,” a move that they had to learn to work at a club. Although black was the most popular costume, there were a bunch of different colors often assigned by a lottery system. Yet, at some clubs, black was only worn by the long-term girls at the clubs. Â
Now, while it seemed that these girls were in control of their costumes with an extremely strict “no harassment policy,” it wasn’t exactly that behind the scenes. To start simply, they had no control over the color they wore unless they very rarely were given a “pick your own color” option. This could lead girls to wear unflattering colors or colors they hated. Along with that, the “no touching rule” seemed to disappear and be covered up/disposed of when it came to the VIP members of the club in order to keep scandal out of the media. The playboys who lived in the mansion, though, had the least amount of control, as they faced extreme curfews and extremely strict rules on top of the already strict “Playboy Rule Book.” Many accounts and documentaries say that there was extreme sexual and physical abuse that the girls who played bunnies experienced as well. So, when did we girls actually reclaim the symbol for ourselves?
The Playboy Bunny becoming a Halloween costume took place in the early and mid-2000s. One notable moment was in Mean Girls when we saw two amazing costumes: Karen Smith’s mouse costume and Regina George dressed up as a bunny herself. Probably the most iconic moment in early 2000s movies was when Elle Woods in Legally Blonde dressed up as a fully pink version of the costume. Both of these characters were looked at as some of the most powerful young female characters of their time. We also saw celebrities dress up as the bunny more and more. One of my favorite modern-day examples of this is when Sabrina Carpenter came out as a Playboy bunny during her Short n’ Sweet tour, a tour in which the entire album is about women and girls reclaiming their sexuality for themselves.Â
The point is that girls are no longer dressing up as a Playboy Bunny because of the “good pay and working conditions.” They are doing it to be sexy and fun, because they WANT to. Looking past the surface of the costume and looking at the women (fictional and real) who have worn it in our lifetime shows that what can be seen as a sex symbol for men is powerful when a girl wears it. The bunny Halloween costume is just one example of women taking charge of their own sexuality and no longer feeling ashamed of being considered sexual beings. Not only that, but former Bunnies still meet up and have created strong female friendships through the competition and challenges they faced when they worked as one, privately claiming their control when none of us saw it. When we take a step back, the Bunny was made by women and reclaimed from being just another version of “sex sells” for powerful men. So, this Halloween, if you see a girl dressed up as a Playboy Bunny or with her own Hugh Hefner, remind yourself that that bunny is why Hefner is even a costume in the first place. The bunny made Hefner, not the other way around.Â