Reflections on Playboy: Make Terri Lynn Farrow a Playmate!

September 12, 2007

Make Terri Lynn Farrow a Playmate!

This student at Louisiana State University is pictured much more candidly on page 112 of the October Playboy, for its “Girls of the Southeastern [Athletic] Conference” pictorial. In her shot for the current issue, I see self-confident good taste. It’s a cliché to call Playboy’s nudes “tasteful,” but I choose my written words with care.

Virtually every image Playboy has ever published is less shocking and disgusting than some other representation of the naked female form that most men and women could easily imagine (or even create and have displayed in an art gallery somewhere). Playboy Enterprises’ workshops of model recruitment, photography, and photo editing work so consistently well that tastefulness is embarrassingly consistent in the product. (Even so, the allegedly ruthless corporate machine frightens away women whose hearts aren’t really set on it.) Embarrassingly, I say, because some seem to think that Playboy must earn its status as art rather than mere entertainment by shocking the bourgeoisie. But my political tribe, libertarianism, begs to differ. We’ve been building a consensus that “art” and “entertainment” are interchangeable terms. Like McDonald’s, Starbucks, and to a lesser extent, professional sports, Playboy may be a victim of its own success in bringing sensual pleasures to the masses within reliable—but perhaps aging—perimeters of good taste. Since sports seems to be the least hated of the four institutions by those who would dismiss Playboy centerfolds as kitsch, I’ll try to explain Terri Lynn Farrow as something like a Joe DiMaggio or Muhammad Ali: one who can express beautiful individuality through a medium of mass entertainment with conventions and clichés already familiar to millions through decades of exposure. Whatever the medium under discussion, not everyone can do that!

To follow my argument completely, you’ll need a paid subscription to the Playboy Cyber Club. That link is not work-safe, of course, and neither are many that follow in this post. I first noticed her in the fall 2001 College Girls newsstand special. But later on, I was thrilled to find six minutes of video of her tryout for the New Orleans “Casting Call” (QuickTime, RealVideo). This woman is charming, quirky, polite, daring, and gritty. Unless you hold to the rigid formulas of some (not all) feminists for how a self-respecting woman behaves toward men, you’ll notice this combination of traits, remember it, and love it. She satisfies almost every possible definition of all-American by claiming Swedish, German, French, Jewish, and African-American blood. The headshot in this post comes from her January 27, 2003, Cyber Girl of the Week gig. But in light of the aesthetic choices she made in presenting her body again more recently, she deserves to go all the way to Playmate of the Month at least.

I don’t dislike breast implants for the sanctimonious reasons that some others do. If you can’t agree with me on this, please have the integrity to say “I hate saline!” instead of “I hate silicone!” The former compound deserves the blame for the balloon look of visual adult entertainment in the 1990s. The American silicone market was largely destroyed by pseudoscientific lawsuits that feminists, among others, widely supported out of moral panic. Those lawsuits arguably did more to restrict women’s individual choices than that Marxist demon of good intentions, Catharine MacKinnon, ever can.

But for purely aesthetic reasons, I want a greater variety of sizes and shapes of breasts on the centerfold proper. As it happens, Farrow impresses me by still not having implants of any kind—if the photo on newsstands now is a reliable indicator. The long hair that falls over her petite breasts is an obviously dyed, platinum shade of blond. The October 2007 Playboy won’t tell you this, but her modestly trimmed pubic hair is that darker shade of blond naturally, according to the video. Farrow must have figured that guys would notice the juxtaposition: hair dyed a nature-defying color over nature’s own breasts. In the twenty-first century, Farrow has something in common with the men who ogle her Playboy picture. She can have the complex, Rabelaisian pleasure of understanding the quirky nuances of her own sexual behavior in light of evolutionary psychology. Like the heliocentric astronomy of Copernicus and Galileo and the evolutionary biology of Darwin and Wallace, this paradigm shift frightens and disturbs even as it opens up new possibilities for dialogue on perennial human issues like entertainment and the arts.

If Farrow can be anybody’s muse in any such indirect manner (with all due modesty!), she deserves a centerfold.

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 5:39 PM

Wally Banners left this comment at September 14, 2007 2:11 AM
very pretty :)

timejinker left this comment at September 17, 2007 5:37 PM
Terri should be a playmate! She is better than most I've seen.

timejinker left this comment at September 17, 2007 5:38 PM
Amen! Terri Lynn Farrow is Playmate material and THEN some! :)

Terri Lynn left this comment at December 6, 2007 8:14 PM
You are too sweet. thanks for having so much faith in me...so kind and generous. I am so happy that we connected and now have become friends.

love terri

Brian Sorgatz left this comment at December 6, 2007 9:23 PM
Thanks for stopping by, Terri. Any time.

terri lynn left this comment at June 7, 2008 1:45 PM
Honey...my ship has sailed. I am far too old by Hefner's high standards. You are such a wonderful friend to me--thank you for always being so kind.

xoxo tee

Brian Sorgatz left this comment at June 7, 2008 3:25 PM
Two final thoughts before I shut up about it, Tee: (1.) In the magazine, you look ten years younger than your actual age; and (2.) Women have been known to make the centerfold at 35, and you’re not even there yet.

The whole world is aging slower and slower. You can tell that from the new Indiana Jones.

xoxo brian

Prowler Bob left this comment at February 11, 2009 7:48 AM
I met Terri Lynn for the first time last Sunday at a benefit car show (for a young girl injured in a car accident) where she was gracious enough to come by a donate her time and talents to help raise money to defray the cost of her medical expences. Wally, guys, I do agree she is centerfold material seeing her first hand. Too old? I would have never guessed her age. She says she is too old what about Vickie Lamotta. I have received playboy for the last 30 years and she is by far number one with me. She has my vote. Go Girl !

Brian Sorgatz left this comment at February 11, 2009 9:22 AM
I haven’t met her in person, but it doesn’t surprise me that it’s a pleasant experience.

Anonymous left this comment at December 30, 2009 1:48 PM
To meet Terri in person would be a dream date
for anyone . To actually know her as a person
is breathtaking. ! B.R.

September 12, 2007

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