Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself

by Crystal Hefner

Playing the role of someone else’s image of you every day and every night is exhausting—physically, mentally, and in a way that feels like your soul is actually tired, like some kind of life energy battery is running low.

Everything had changed, but I shoved the pain down. Because I was a woman now, and that’s what women do. I didn’t know much, but I already knew that.

Even after all this effort—the hair, the eyebrows, the makeup, the clothes, and even with chicken cutlets tucked into my shirt—I still felt wrong. I felt ugly. I felt like I would never be good enough or pretty enough.

Power is insidious when it masks itself as generosity. And generosity is insidious when it’s a camouflage for control. And both power and generosity are confusing when they gaslight you into believing they could be love.

I was used to competing with other women, but I had never competed with someone’s mother. It was awkward at best, and pathological at worst.

I don’t have to have it all figured out, and sometimes you only know who you are by what you are not any longer. I am not someone who needs a man to give her strength. I am not defined by my body or my looks. My worth is not determined by how many people like my bikini picture on social media.

The man thought to be the greatest lover in the world never knew how to love at all. In the end, it’s just sad.