Gloria Steinem's Undercover Exposé of Playboy Clubs

Gloria Steinem, the renowned feminist writer who died on Thursday, worked undercover as a Playboy Bunny at the Playboy Club in New York in 1963 to document the degrading treatment of women in these clubs. Her investigation, published in Show magazine in 1963, revealed that wages were lower than promised, shifts were physically demanding, and the apparent sexual freedom was enforced through a system of fines. The piece anticipated later feminist themes such as the commodification of women and emotional labor. Steinem, then 28, spent thirty days as a bunny, documenting every moment in a diary format, a technique now studied in journalism schools. The Playboy Club, which opened its first location in Chicago in 1960, was a fashionable nightspot frequented by celebrities like the Beatles, Peter Sellers, and Michelangelo Antonioni. Steinem's report led to practical changes, including the elimination of mandatory gynecological and venereal disease tests for bunnies, which Hugh Hefner later admitted were excessive. Despite the risks to her career—she struggled to find work as a journalist for a time after publication—her exposé became a landmark of undercover journalism.