Still, it’s puzzling that Karen signed up to do the Dear PMs feature. We’ve spoken on our thread and in private messages about Karen’s mixed feelings about her experiences as a PM and her regrets about posing—feelings she made clear in the spring of 1981 in her early interviews with Canadian papers. Her decision to participate in Dear PMs is all the more surprising given her reservations about being in the spotlight and her discomfort at being treated thoughtlessly by some people as a sex object. Dear PM asked its contributors to be more open and public about their lives and feelings than any other PMs had been asked to do in the past. By the spring of 1981, Karen was so shell-shocked that she moved back in with her mother. But by the fall, she was willing to be quite specific about where we could meet a woman like her, even to the point of naming the most likely time and place, and she made no bones about loving sex, as long as it was with a man she loves and who respects her, cares about her, and treats her as an equal.
For some reason, therefore, Karen decided by the fall of 1981 to embrace the PM experience, even if she was still ill at ease at some of the car shows (maybe she was just bored). Karen must have felt better about being a PM by the fall of 1981, or she must have decided to make the most of her new-found fame, when she signed on to participate in the Dear PM series. PB opened doors for her, which must have been exciting, given her ambitions. She was featured in “World of Playboy” twice, and we learned from that feature (and from the PM review and her movie credits) that she auditioned successfully for small film roles, that her acrobatic act was going strong, and that she had fun on her Alaskan adventure for PB, which gave her more to do than a car show and allowed her to meet fans in a more natural, co-ed setting. She probably felt more at ease as a PM in the company of both women and men. And she may have learned to cope with the downside of being a PM. I hope so for Karen’s sake. And I hope they paid her well for her Dear PM thoughts.
But on the downside, when we think about Karen feelings during her time with PB, her stint with Dear PMs probably means that she would have accepted the title of POY if it had been offered to her. Indeed, her willingness to participate in Dear PMs probably means that she hoped to win, which means that she was probably disappointed to lose to Hef’s girlfriend—not a great way to lose after having done so much for PB and having proven her worth to the program. She was PB’s most intelligent, articulate, and beautiful voice. And why didn’t they give the Annual Award for Best Playmate Pictorial to Ken
and Karen, rather than to Ken alone? After all, he didn’t win the award for the centerfold, which by Karen’s own admission was taken before she learned how to pose. Ken’s centerfold doesn’t capture Karen’s warmth or beauty to the degree that say, Marilyn Lange’s centerfold does. Ken Marcus is a peerless photographer, but he won the prize because Karen was adorable with her squirrel—because she was captivating in the gym—and because she set the set on fire in the bedroom, once she was at ease before the camera. How he could concentrate long enough to snap the shutter is beyond me.
In light of these thoughts, I’ve thought a bit more about Karen’s response when a PB staffer asked her in the January 1982 Annual Review about her chances of becoming POY. She said “The competition is too good this year. Beside, I’ve had a lot of fun just being Miss January.” It could be, as Eteocles suggests, that she answered as she did because she had given up hope of becoming POY. But it’s quite possible she hadn’t. It was a tough question to ask Karen in such a public forum, and her response was understandably modest and considerate of the feelings of the other PMs. She couldn’t possibly have said that she hoped to win or expected to win without looking foolish or arrogant or worse, and she kindly pointed to the merits of the other PMs and deflected attention from herself. What’s most important, I think, is that the staff member asked her that question—a question that wasn’t asked of any other PM in any other annual review in that era. It suggests to me that the interviewer thought Karen had an excellent chance to win—it would have been a cruel question otherwise. And the interviewer probably asked it because he (it’s a guy question) hoped Karen would win. That’s the only reason I can think of why he would have asked her a question that he shouldn’t have out of consideration for Karen and the other PMs. So again, it seems to me that Karen was the odds-on favorite to be POY, if the staff and the fans had anything to do with it. But of course, we didn’t have anything to do with it. It was one man’s decision. So I feel all the more for Karen. She was robbed—and it must have hurt, even if she had had her fill by then of being a PM.
Karen will probably never chat with us about her experiences as a PM or about her feelings from so many years ago. It could be fun, but then again, it might be depressing for her and for us. I’m glad that Patti Farinelli spoke with her fans and shared her thoughts on a range of subjects. It was fun. But I was horrified to learn that PB dubbed her video. I thought that we were listening to Patti, but in fact we were listening to none other than Shannon Tweed (there’s a troubling theme developing here). The truth about how Karen was treated and about why she lost to “that other woman” might be painful for her and for us. But then again, Karen might be heartened to know that she has so many genuine fans, old and new, after all these years. She’s only a few weeks away from a million views on VEF.