Penthouse Pet Playoff
They're competing to become the Penthouse Pet of the Year 2007.
Nevaeh Nevaeh Nevaeh Nevaeh Nevaeh Shay Laren Shay Laren Shay Laren Shay Laren Heather Vandeven Heather Vandeven Heather Vandeven Heather Vandeven Heather Vandeven Heather Vandeven Heather Vandeven Heather Vandeven Heather Vandeven Lexie Karlsen Lexie Karlsen Lexie Karlsen Lexie Karlsen Lexie Karlsen Lexie Karlsen Lexie Karlsen Melissa Jacobs Melissa Jacobs Melissa Jacobs Melissa Jacobs Melissa Jacobs Melissa Jacobs (L-R) Navaeh, Melissa Jacobs, Heather Vandeven, Lexie Karlsen Renee Diaz Renee Diaz Renee Diaz Renee Diaz Renee Diaz Renee Diaz Renee Diaz Krista Ayne Krista Ayne Krista Ayne Krista Ayne Jennifer Emerson Bella Starr Bella Starr Celeste Star Celeste Star Celeste Star Celeste Star Celeste Star
9/13/06
The Pets -- Celeste Star (July ’05), Melissa Jacobs (Oct. ’05), Renee Diaz (Nov. ’05) Bella Starr (Dec. ’05), Heather Vandeven (Jan. ’06), Charlie Laine (Feb. ’06), Jennifer Emerson (March ’06), Krista Ayne (April ’06), Nevaeh (May ’06), Shay Laren (June ’06) and Lexie Karlsen (July ’06) -- meet photographers at the Marriott Hotel in Sherman Oaks Wednesday afternoon.
I arrive at 1:10 p.m., 20 minutes early. There's a generous food and drink spread.
Lainie introduces me to Heather and Lexie. I take the two Pets off to a table and sit them down for an hour-long chat (audio).
Aside from two video guys who show up to do fluffy interviews, I'm the only media in the room.
I try to use my powers for good.
Lexie: "Starting at 16, I wrote for newspapers (Arizona Republic, Phoenix Gazette) and magazines (Stuff, Perfect 10). Then I started modeling. I was a Playboy Playmate in 1999. I did Perfect 10. Here I am at age 28."
Heather: "Even as a child, I was pervy. I remember as a child (about seven) finding a nudie magazine and thinking the girls were so beautiful and hoping that one day I could be a naked model.
"I've always been an outsider. I hung out with four girls in highschool [in Santa Rosa, CA]. One was the class president. I was always skateboarding. The other was really into science and the other was really into fashion."
Lexie: "I was always the smart girl. I was in the AP classes. I went to a ghetto school with a lot of gangsters in Mesa, Arizona."
Lexie says she never slept with anyone she interviewed, but she did sleep with a guy named Dan in Arizona who interviewed her. "I thought I liked his personality but then I found out he was boring and terrible in bed. Then he asked me to move in with him. It was all over after that."
Heather: "When I was 17, I graduated from highschool and I joined the Army for two and a half years. I trained with men in basic training. I learned how to use rocket launches, how to throw grenades, machine guns, hand to hand combat. My actual job in the military was food inspection.
"I lived in the jungles of Costa Rica. I've traveled the world. My whole life has been about going on adventures.
"The men in the military were not attractive to me. I think I slept with two (colleagues). My first roommate in the military was a bull dyke -- muscular, short hair, she did welding for the Navy. One night I was in the shower. She came home drunk and opened up the bathroom door and said, 'Pretty, pretty Heather, why don't you come with me to my bedroom?' I remember sitting in the shower cowering. I said, 'I'm not interested. Please leave me along.'
"I first had sex with a man at 15. It was with my boyfriend to the sweet music of Rick James. The first time I had sex with a woman, I was about 20.
"In my relationships, I'm heterosexual. I am attracted to women but we're too similar. I need something to balance me out."
Lexie: "I like men. My first guy was my boyfriend at 15. It was terrible. My first time with a girl was 17. It wasn't good either. She was rough. Her fingernails were too sharp."
Luke: "How has being a nude model affected your relationships with men?"
Heather: "It can be difficult. They tend to get jealous and needy. 'What are you doing? Who are you with?'"
Lexie: "It's the same. They start out loving it. Their friends love it. Then further down the road, they start getting insecure. The worst thing you can do is try to confine me. I'm a redhead and a Scorpio. I'm Irish Italian.
"It really impacts relationships. It becomes too much for most men to handle."
Luke: "You've chosen being a nude model over being able to have a relationship with most men."
Heather: "I never think of it as that. I always have relationships with men, even if it is short-lived.
"If no man will accept me, I'll just have lots of cats."
Lexie: "Maybe I'll be married lots of times."
Luke: "How has being a nude model affected your platonic relationships with women?"
Shay Laren: "I did lose my best friend because she thought it was ruining my life. I didn't appreciate that she didn't support me in something that I wanted to do. Younger women [tend] to be supportive. 'How can I do that?' Older women are like, 'Why are you doing this?'
"I don't really care what other people think."
Lexie: "One of my friends from highschool thought it was so degrading. But you can't look at it that way. It's empowering to women. You have to have a lot of confidence to show your body. You'd think they'd respect that.
"My mom is supportive. 'Make all the money you can.' My dad thought it was great."
Heather: "My friends are alternative and far removed from this industry. That I'm in this industry is entertaining. I was very apprehensive about getting into it. I thought it would affect my traditional acting and modeling but it's only helped."
"My family support me. They refer to Penthouse as 'The House.' I showed my grandmother my centerfold. She loved it."
Lexie: "Me too."
Heather: "She saw that I was sound in body, mind and spirit and that I made these choices out of clarity, not desperation.
"I have a degree in Education from Southern Illinois University and I'm working on my masters in Nutrition."
"I'm monogamous for the most part."
I ask Lexie: "Have you ever had sex for money?"
Lexie: "No comment."
She laughs.
Shay: "I hate people calling me a porn star. I hate people talking about one breast being slightly larger than the other on every page of the internet as though anyone can have perfect natural breasts. People critiquing you, crazy horny pervs who probably have one ball sac talking about your boobs. I'm moving from Maui to here and that's hard. Other than that, I'm a positive person."
Lexie: "I have two kids (boys two and one). I'm a MILF. I love my kids. I love getting older because you become more comfortable in your own skin. Sexually it just keeps getting better. When I was 17, I didn't want to live past 24.
"Nobody has it all. I have arthritis really bad. But you have to look at the positive."
Luke: "Thank you Deepok Chopra."
Shay: "He's my hero."
Heather: "I've been having trouble balancing traveling, having fun, career and relationships. I'm driven in my career and love what I do. I hate that it affects my relationships and that I can't give people the time they want from me.
"Being I'm seen naked all the time, I'm dedicated to my yoga practice and to eating well. My friends my age are losing it and I'm only getting better. I get to look beautiful and have my picture taken and talk to interviewers.
"Ultimately, I want to live in nature."
Shay: "I want to be known as the person that everyone cherishes and that everyone can come to for advice."
Lexie: "My two year old watches me model. When I say, 'Mommy has to go off to work,' he says, 'Model!' and pushes up his shirt. And he poses."
Lexie laughs. "I try to create an environment where he knows that it is very natural and he won't be embarrassed by it. In my house, I have my covers on the wall. Not that they're explicit. I've never done anything hardcore. I do censor out if there are boobies. I just want to raise him in a world where it's very natural and a job like anything else.
"I'd rather him be able to survive in the world than to keep him sheltered from everything. People are judgmental but they're going to be that no matter what."
Heather: "I am not going to have children. My mother had a child when I was 14 and I experienced what it was like to be a mother. I'm not interested.
"If I did have a kid [and he comes home crying because he was teased that his mom was a centerfold]. Yes, mommy poses naked. Mommy was lucky one day so she could do that. This is proof that you can do whatever you want and it will be OK with mommy."
Lexie: "I wrote a book, a dating guide for divorced men -- The Divorced Guy's Guide to Dating: How to Meet More Women. I had my own publishing company."
"I like to drink wine. I have a high tolerance because I come from a long line of alcoholics. A bottle is nothing."
Heather: "I struggle with television. I try not to watch it because I know it makes you dumb. It wastes you. But part of me loves TV. For years, I didn't have a TV. I recently got a TV back and I've been fighting my addiction to TV."
"I was a late bloomer. I was very athletic. I remember in junior high and parts of highschool, girls were like, 'Maybe you were just meant to be a boy. Maybe that's why you're totally flat-chested and you can do ten pull-ups and run the mile in seven minutes.' I was devastated. I used to stuff my bra.
"I was about 15 when the skateboarders started to recognize I was cute."
"Modeling has helped heal it. I did not seek out modeling. One of the people at Penthouse saw my picture on a friend's computer, otherwise I would never have pursued it."
Lexie: "Kids were mean to me. Redheads get singled out."
"I come from a broken family. When he was in his mean stage, my stepdad would say, 'You're so ugly.'"
