When you think of bunnies, do you think of sex? Hugh Hefner did.
Playboy Bunnies became a sex icon around the world the moment the first Playboy Club opened in Chicago in 1961. Some argue that the Playboy Bunny has since come to represent the Sexual Revolution in the United States. The conservative post-war ‘50s crumbled away, and the Bunny emerged, clad in satin and hosiery.

Clubs opened all over the U.S. and eventually overseas. “Step into the Spotlight!” the recruitment brochure called, “Enjoy a glamorous career as you make top earnings at the world-famous Playboy Clubs.”

Girls flocked to auditions, hoping to join the famous Bunny family. Carol Ward was one of those girls, reluctantly dragged to the audition by her roommate.

Ward grew up in San Francisco with her mother and younger brother. Her mother mostly left them alone, limiting contact to alcohol-induced confrontations. She would bring home drunkards, which Ward and her brother would then lock out of the house and have arrested. Other nights, she would lock Carol out after dark.

On the night of her eighteenth birthday, Ward left after a fight over money and never went back. She moved in with friends and worked at the city Greyhound Bus Station, until the Bunny auditions came along.

While the brochure described the Bunnies as “girls who, like yourself, possess excellent character, striking good looks, charm, intelligence and friendly personalities,” Ward remembers them as a rather unhappy bunch.

There were strict rules for wearing the bunny outfit. Every day before beginning work, Bunnies had to weigh in with their “Den Mother.” They were not allowed to fluctuate in weight beyond one pound, with exceptions made for times of increased water retention.

The outfits were custom-made for each girl, and while the brochure said there were no weight and height requirements, it did say that a “Bunny must be properly proportioned.” And the outfits were so tight that Bunnies could only bend at the knee, not the waist.

Bunnies were assigned colors of costumes based on their skin coloring or where they worked in the club. A former Los Angeles Den Mother notes on the Playboy website that “The darker-skinned Bunnies looked best in pinks and the powder-blues,” while “most redheads got a green costume,” and “if a girl had gorgeous blue eyes, you'd want to put her in a blue costume.”

“I liked the black [suit] the best,” Ward says with a tentative smile. “It was always my favorite, it was so elegant.”

At one point, Ward moved to New York to work in their Playboy Club, but she didn’t stay long.

“It was a nightmare,” she says. “They were all on something—speed, who knows. They were all whack-jobs.” So she moved back to San Francisco and roomed with a few girls who worked at other entertainment clubs in the city.

By this time she was 23, and she wasn’t eating well. Like many of the other Bunnies and girls who worked where “proper proportions” were important, she lived on diet pills: uppers to get up in the morning and downers to go to sleep at night.

It was nearing the late ‘60s, and things were beginning to change. Like Ward, the Playboy clubs were beginning to grow up. They were international now and earning most of their money in London, where gambling had just been legalized. Bunnies were given themed outfits—polka dots, leopard print and psychedelic Pucci swirls abounded.

But Ward was drifting away from that scene.

As a result of her habits, Ward’s brother sent her to Langley Porter, the San Francisco Psychiatric Ward. After a gruesome experience involving shock therapy and tranquilizers that left her dependent on prescription drugs rather than diet pills, Ward was sent to a psychiatric halfway house.

If she didn’t take the prescriptions, she would shake uncontrollably. She eventually stopped taking all of the drugs completely. “I laid in bed and shook for three days to get it out of my system,” she says.
Ward fell in love with a man she met in the halfway house. But it was short lived. By the time she had their son, he wanted nothing to do with being a father.

She went on to marry again, but again it wasn’t meant to be. This time, he turned out to be an abusive alcoholic.

“[My son] told me to get out of there,” she says quietly, looking away, “he was a senior in high school and he had better judgment.”
So she left.

Today Ward is retired, and living a healthy life with her third husband, trying to make it up to her body for all those years when she abused it with diet pills and corsets.

“I am less concerned with what others think about me now, I am able to just be myself and do as I please,” she says with a flirtatious look.