The Girls Next Door star described Hefner’s apparent dislike of red lipstick as “a control tactic,” sharing that she wore it a “a couple of times,” before she said it became an issue “six months” into living in the Mansion when he “felt like he had the leeway to yell at me over it.”
Holly Madison is opening up about one of Hugh Hefner’s alleged “control tactics” he used on women in the Playboy Mansion.
During a recent appearance on the Ahead of the Curve with Coco Mocoe podcast, the 43-year-old former reality star claimed Hefner “hated” when Playmates wore red lipstick, and explained why the Playboy founder disliked the specific color.
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When podcast host Coco Mocoe asked Madison where Hefner’s apparent dislike of red lipstick “stemmed from,” and if she believed it was a “control tactic,” Madison replied, “I think it was a control tactic, but also, 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.”
Madison, who moved into the Playboy Mansion at the age of 21 in 2001, continued, “Somebody said, like, the higher up you are in a cult the worse you’re treated because they want the new people to want to bond and feel into it.”
“So I would wear red lipstick when I was new,” she added. “It wasn’t a big deal. 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, then he felt like he had the leeway to yell at me over it.”
The Girls Next Door alum said Hefner didn’t like women wearing red lipstick because he believed it made them look older.
“I think he didn’t love it, 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,” Madison said.
“It was very more sophisticated, fashion model, red lipstick,” she continued. “It was a lot of fabric and big skirts and everything, and he hated that. He wanted skimpy and fresh-faced and very young looking.”
“So I think that’s where his hatred of red lipstick came from [because] to him, that was an older mature woman,” Holly concluded, “and it wasn’t, like, the barely legal thing anymore.”
Madison dated Hefner for seven years, from 2001 to 2008. The Down the Rabbit Hole author has been very outspoken about her time living in the Playboy mansion, describing her time there as “cult-like.”
Hefner died in 2017 the age of 91.
