Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny

by Holly Madison

Around the turn of the millennium, it became fashionable for women to appear stupid—to get by solely on their looks and to be concerned only with fame and materialism. Some of the effects of that moment in the zeitgeist still linger today.

While there was a part of me that acknowledged the idiocy and superficiality that surrounded me, I fell for the glamour: hook, line, and sinker. It took years for me to realize just how manipulated and used I had been.

Someday I’ll know what it’s like, I thought. Someday I’ll know what it’s like to have it all.

But like all that glitters and sparkles, this opportunity wouldn’t come without a steep price.

The majority of the women who had done time at the mansion were born hustlers who knew how to milk a man for every last cent. That ability to manipulate just wasn’t a part of my DNA.