Watch Me Be An Old: A Hot Take On Sara Underwood & Playboy

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m finally reaching the age where I have some perspective on the ebb and flow of history and, more specifically, pop culture. Way back when, when dinosaurs ruled the earth I remember being a big fan of the Playboy aesthetic.

E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) 2011 – at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Yes, I’m well aware of that that says about me now in this “woke” era, but there was a moment in time around 30 years ago when Playboy was, in fact, cool. Even earlier, in the late 60s and early 70s, there was the Playboy Afterhours Show which was really, really cool.

The point of this is, there was once an era where if you were a smoking hot babe in Middle America without the money to go to college, that you could hitch a ride to Chicago or, later, LA, and maybe figure out a way to get yourself within the pages of Playboy. And, if that was still the case, Emily Ratajkowski would probably be a modern day Pamela Anderson — if she went blonde, of course.

I am fucking well aware of the extremely dark elements of all of this and that I’m romanticizing some pretty shitty things done at the hands of Hugh Hefner. But, when I was a young man, that was all we knew about, was the gauzy, stylized Playboy esthetic.

A more recent picture of Ms. Underwood.

One gorgeous young woman who was able to use Playboy to get what she wanted is Sara Underwood. The interesting thing about Ms. Underwood is she was always hot, but it wasn’t until much later that she got hot, hot. Like stunner hot.

She’s gotten a huge amount of work done, to great effect. And, from what I can tell, she’s pretty much living a normal life in…a tiny house? But, I will note, that she was in a fast food commercial once with none other than another dime piece, Emily Ratajkowski.

Anyway, it’s interesting to me that the otherwise stunning Ms. Underwood doesn’t have a bigger media footprint.

Oh well. I’m old.