Fifty years ago, a woman went undercover as a Playboy Bunny. This is what she discovered.

Today, Gloria Steinem is known as a feminist, journalist, and social and political activist, whose works have earned her a respected platform when it comes to the most significant issues of our time.

But almost 55 years ago, Steinem was a 28-year-old reporter who sensed something uncomfortable about the way Playboy founder Hugh Hefner claimed to be advancing the sexual revolution. She wanted to tell the story of how women were really treated at Playboy clubs – and what their lives were really like. So in 1963, she decided to go undercover as a Playboy Bunny, and she wrote two essays in Show magazine about her experiences.

Her writing was funny. And smart. And honest. But it showed a side of Playboy that almost had her sued, and damaged her career for years.

To begin with, Steinem applied for a job as a Playboy Club Bunny using a fake name, and created a backstory for ‘Marie’. It didn’t hurt that Steinem herself had been a beauty queen and a dancer, and certainly had the appearance to convincingly become a Playboy Bunny.

Listen to Mia Freedman’s interview with Gloria Steinem. Post continues after audio.

At the time, advertisements for Bunnies stated they could earn twice as much as a typical waitress. “Attractive young girls can now earn $200-$300 a week,” read the ads, which also called it the “top job in the country for a young girl”.

Upon becoming hired (without any background checks), Steinem was fitted for her costume. She described it as “two inches smaller than any of my measurements everywhere except the bust,” and “so tight that the zipper caught my skin”. She observed that the tightness of the corsets were such that a sneeze could break the zipper – which happened often. During try-outs, Steinem was told,  “Girls with colds usually have to be replaced”.

She also saw that once the corsets were removed, their patterns stayed firmly imprinted on the women’s skin.

In the few days Steinem was there, her feet permanently grew half a size, a result of standing in heels at least three inches high for hours at a time. “They ache like teeth and are so swollen I can’t get sneakers on,” she said after her first night. One of the other Bunnies told her, “A lot of girls say their legs get numb from the knee up. I think it presses on a nerve or something”.

The way Steinem described it sounded eerily like torture.

She also lost almost five kilos in her time there, and when she noticed her corset was feeling more comfortable, it was tightened another two inches.

One reality that struck Steinem was that all Bunnies were required to have a full internal and external physical exam by a doctor. When she asked if she could see her own doctor, she was told, "no, you must go to our doctor for a special physical. All Bunnies have to".

When Steinem got to the doctor, and challenged the idea of being tested for venereal disease, and having an internal examination, the doctor replied: "Look, we usually find that girls who object to it strenuously have some reason..." before pausing.

Interestingly, this was the one critical element of her expose Hugh Hefner took one board - choosing to abolish the internal physical exam and blood test. Steinem had made a compelling case against it, discovering that other waitresses in New York City were definitely not required to undergo such testing.

Despite Playboy clubs advertising a high wage for their Bunnies, Steinem found that they were required to pay for their own fake eyelashes, tights, and cost of cleaning their costumes. And she only met one woman who earned the $200 the clubs spoke of - the others earned far less.

A particularly infantilising element of the Playboy Bunnies' roles was a strict demerit system, which awarded and deducted points for messy hair, nails or makeup, and behaviour on the floor. For example, chewing gum while working was punished by  “10 demerits for the first offense, 20 for second and dismissal for the third". The women were also only given one, very poor quality meal during their work, so many tried to sneak food from the buffet. If they were caught, they were given demerits.

The catch was that demerits cost $2.50 each - which added up quickly. Because the club couldn't technically take money from their workers, the theory was that the women would earn the points back. It was a system that had them obsessing over the cleanliness of their uniforms, which they often couldn't control because of customers constantly touching them.

When Steinem's two-part article was published, she received "obscene and threatening" phone calls for weeks. Despite her brilliant work, she struggled to get serious work as a journalist. She's since said of that time, “I had now become a Bunny — and it didn’t matter why".

But a number of Playboy Bunnies reached out to her to thank her for her work, and for shedding a light on their experiences. Two women told her they'd made complaints about exploitation, and were threatened with having acid thrown in their faces.

In 2011, almost 50 years after her undercover story, Steinem told Interview magazine it took her "a very long time to be glad" she did the Playboy assignment. “At first, it was such a gigantic mistake from a career point of view that I really regretted it… Be warned that if you're a woman journalist and you choose an underground job that's related to sex or looks, you may find it hard to shake the very thing you were exposing.”