Karen Elaina Price

[cqnew1648]

I took a look a few months ago at Karen’s high school yearbooks on Classmates.com. She mentions her high school on her Facebook page, so they’re pretty easy to track down. I can’t post her senior portrait, because that would violate VEF rules, but it’s a lovely picture. I don’t think she was at that school until she was a junior because she didn’t appear in the yearbooks from what would have been her sophomore and freshman years. She’s cute in her junior photo, a young girl with a big grin and ribbons in her hair, but the photo is very, very small—too small to get a clear picture of how she might have struck her classmates at the time. But in her senior picture, you can already see how beautiful she is, and get a hint of what was to come.

What’s surprising is that Karen didn’t show up anywhere else in those two yearbooks—not in a single club or activity. Just those two small pictures. It’s the school’s fault in part, because it had a men’s gymnastics team, but not a women’s team. It’s sad that she couldn’t win medals for her school. Given the time she dedicated to gymnastics outside of school, she probably didn’t have time for much else. But it’s clear she wasn’t part of the in crowd. Not on the drill team, cheerleading team, homecoming court, nothing.

What’s worse, when Karen’s senior class handed out accolades for such honors as “best body” or “person you’d most like to be stranded on a desert island with,” she didn’t win. Those honors went to a blonde, as you might expect in the San Fernando Valley. No offense to the winner, but I wonder how many of her male classmates wished they had voted differently when they saw Karen in Playboy. How could they not have noticed? As she said in PB, by the time she was 16, she had to make her own clothes, because clothes off the rack just wouldn’t fit.

I wonder if her classmates simply didn’t get a chance to know her, since she must have transferred in during her junior year—maybe after her parents divorced. Divorce is never easy on the children. It might have made her more guarded than she would have wished to be.

On her Facebook page, a friend of hers posted a photo of Karen at her senior prom, cute as can be. I couldn’t help but notice that her date (and I mean this entirely as a compliment) looks like one of us—a totally regular guy. Hats off to how he scored a date with one of the most beautiful women in the world. Thinking of Kiss Army’s recent posts, it’s hard to believe that Karen was hard to know or unapproachable in high school, or that she surrounded herself with super athletic guys like her friends on Muscle Beach. She wasn’t on the radar of most guys, which I’m sure a ton of them now regret. It now makes sense when she told her father, upon hearing of PB’s offer, “but those girls are tens!” She might not have thought of herself as a ten. Judging from her yearbooks there were young women in her class who were viewed as tens—and she wasn’t one of them.

Yes, more puzzles about Karen’s history and how she became a Playmate. I would recommend, if you’re a devoted fan, that you look her up on Facebook and check out her yearbooks. We don’t want to intrude on her privacy, but I for one am happy there’s the internet, so we can see such wonderful SFW photos of Karen and know her a bit better. I admire her all the more. But what a leap from being a normal, under-the-radar, seventeen-year-old high school kid and a nineteen-year-old children’s gymnastics teacher to finding herself a Playmate. What a stunning progression for a young woman over the space of two short years. She must have been shocked. I can’t imagine what that experience would have been like—so sudden and unexpected. You can’t see it coming—and I’m certain neither did she. You can begin to see what’s coming when she’s wearing her adorable prom dress and certainly by the time she wore her peasant blouse for Playboy. But who in high school would have thought she’d pop out of her homemade clothes and gym togs and leave everyone who knew her in high school speechless, from that PB photo her as a teen with a pigeon on her head?

Karen welcomed us in her opening shots for her layout.



And she looked just as young, sweet, and approachable in photos we’ve seen from her PB tour. Every reporter who wrote about her felt the same—a kind, thoughtful, down-to-earth girl-next-door who hadn’t known what she was getting into and was having trouble coming to terms with being in the limelight for the first time in her life.



So, I have a tough time thinking that Karen was ever stuck up or sold on herself: not now, not then. When she was with PB, she didn’t date Hugh Hefner or a famous actor or a rock star (like the undeserving POY from 1981 did), which I’m sure she could have done. She dated one of the fellows in the two-man band who entertained on the auto show circuit, and her closest friend was a young woman in a magic show, not a party girl or a starlet. That’s the way I see Karen. PB may have photographed her as the darling of her tanned, athletic, well-built friends on Muscle Beach. She was the darling of her Muscle Beach friends, who adore her to this day. But she never looked down on regular guys who treated her with affection and respect, and she dated quite a few. She was grounded, and she doubtless has never forgotten her days in high school when she was just another kid, whose future even she couldn’t see.

Thank goodness she had the strength of character to keep a level head and follow her dreams as an athlete and acrobat. And thank goodness that she had a chance to realize, at least for a few heady months, how special and beautiful she is. Every young woman deserves that. That she took off her clothes is a surprise.



But her photos shouldn’t lead us to forget the kind, sensitive, and humble person who Karen was and is to this day. She’s had a hard life, in so many ways, and she deserves our respect and whatever support we can give her on the web, so that others can understand the spirit in which she posed and why we enjoy her photos as we do.

Yes, I confess, Karen’s photos turn me on. Please don’t blame me, Karen—that’s what you wanted to do and were determined to do. It’s all your fault. But if you were thinking just a little bit about the folks who overlooked you in high school, you certainly made your point!

[KissArmy]

Originally Posted by cqnew1648

I wonder if her classmates simply didn’t get a chance to know her, since she must have transferred in during her junior year—maybe after her parents divorced. Divorce is never easy on the children. It might have made her more guarded than she would have wished to be.

Good discussion, thanks (and thanks for mentioning me!). As I look back on the playmates I followed, I try to remember if the playmate mentioned having friends, hanging out with friends. Especially friends that are girls.

I don't recall Karen ever mentioning her friends at that age. And it sounds like her Dad had issues. So when you add the two, maybe that's why she poured herself into a single pursuit and gravitated towards a bodyguard of alpha males.

If that's even true. I don't know it is. In any event, best wishes to her.

[Marialva]

Originally Posted by Marialva

Another vintage community. Karen is the second and the third most voted model this week.