Hugh Hefner’s former girlfriend has revealed the unsettling reason why red lipstick was allegedly banned in the Playboy Mansion.
Life inside the Playboy Mansion wasn’t all glitz and glamour, according to Hugh Hefner’s former girlfriend, Holly Madison.
The now-45-year-old model lived at the infamous estate from the early 2000s until her split from Hefner in 2008. She was just one of many women who shared a romantic relationship with the late publisher, who passed away in 2017 at the age of 91.
Hefner was known for having multiple girlfriends living with him at any given time, reportedly engaging in sexual relationships with all of them. His “main girlfriend” would change periodically, with Madison holding the title for a time.
Now, The Girls Next Door star is speaking out about her strange experiences at the mansion, where she first moved in at just 21 years old in 2001.
Speaking on an episode of the Ahead of the Curve with Coco Mocoe podcast, the model revealed that Hefner had strict rules when it came to the women living in the mansion, such as disliking when models wore red lipstick.
The former playmate believed that his aversion toward a rouge lip was a “control tactic,” but added that girls that were new to the mansion would be allowed to wear red lipstick without any repercussions.
“When I was brand new, I wore red lipstick out a couple of times, and he didn’t say anything about it, because when you were the new girl in the group, you were always treated well,” she shared.
After half a year of living at the mansion – everything began to change. “It wasn’t a big deal until, like, six months into it, when I was living in his bedroom and I was the main girlfriend that he felt like he had the leeway to yell at me over it,” she revealed.
She went on to suggest that Hefner discouraged the color because he preferred his girlfriends to look “skimpy, fresh-faced, and very young-looking,” associating red with “older, mature women”.
“Because when he invented the concept of a playmate in the ’50s, he wanted the women to look very young and fresh-faced because he felt like the look in the ‘50s at the time was very – he described it as ‘somebody’s older sister,'” she added.
After Hefner’s death, many of his former girlfriends spoke out about the shocking conditions inside the mansion.
They revealed that they had a strict 6:00PM curfew, weren’t allowed to have relationships outside the mansion, and had to line up to collect their allowance from him.
Hefner’s widow, Crystal Hefner, once described the mansion as feeling like a prison, claiming security would prevent her from leaving.
“When I moved into the mansion, I saw access and power and thought it was amazing. But then the walls started to close in on me,” she told The Guardian. “I think broken women gravitate towards something like that. I still don’t understand why. I’m going back to school to study more psychology.”
