Playboy’s Petite Poser Medical Lake Woman Appears In Current Issue’s Photo Layout On ‘Little Women’
Some mothers would be outraged if their daughter appeared nude in Playboy. Jenny Waddell was delighted. In fact, she was the one who sent photos of her daughter, April, to the magazine and suggested her as a photo subject. April appears in the July issue of Playboy, now on newsstands, as part of an eight-page feature on petite women.
“I’d never done nude modeling before,” says April, a shy, soft-spoken 20-year-old who still lives at home with her parents near Medical Lake. “It was interesting.” The magazine flew April to Chicago last November and spent an entire day taking photos. The result is that Playboy’s 4 million subscribers see her wearing not much more than a ring in her navel.
April, a Georgia native who has lived in the Spokane area since 1982, hopes the Playboy appearance will be a springboard to an acting or modeling career despite her petite size - 5-feet-2 and 105 pounds. “There’s a lot of famous people who got started in Playboy,” says her mother. “It’s very tasteful. It’s not sleazy.”
Playboy model, Jenny says she posed nude at her daughter’s age for a European magazine called Mayfair and enjoyed the experience.
April is a nursing assistant at a Spokane hospital - she wouldn’t say which one - and plans to take pre-med courses at Washington State University this fall. She said most of her friends and co-workers know about the pictorial and have been supportive.
“I work with a lot of nurses,” says April. “They think it’s great.”
Besides the free trip to Chicago, she also received $500 for posing.
Last week, April found herself something of a celebrity around Spokane and Medical Lake. She was invited on a radio station and also autographed copies of the magazine at a Valley store.
“It’s neat getting attention, but I don’t want attention from the wrong people,” April says.
Her response to people who argue that nude photos are demeaning?
“I think Playboy is a class magazine,” she says. “I don’t think it portrays anything bad about women; it’s just showing their beauty.”
Even her father Jerry, an Air Force retiree, doesn’t mind.
“If it makes her happy, I’m proud of her,” he says. “But I don’t think I’d let her do it for any other magazine.”
April says one thing she’s learned from the experience is that modeling is harder than it looks - hot lights and uncomfortable poses. And while she’s enjoying her brief fling with fame, she’s also aware that it probably won’t last.
“It’s always going to be a big thing to me, even if I don’t do anything as a model,” she says.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Two Color Photos