Down the Rabbit Hole - Holly Madison

short-lived stepping-stone that would soon lead me to something bigger.
At the time, my only real beauty routine consisted of bleaching my own roots with Clairol ultrablue
from the drugstore. One day, as I was performing the ritual in my bedroom with the door open,
one of the girlfriends popped her head in.
“What are you doing?” she snarled, with a scrunched nose.
“Dying my hair,” I said, defensively. What did it look like I was doing? I knew these wannabe
Beverly Hills bitches looked down on anything do-it-yourself. “I need to save money. I can’t spend it
all at the salon.”
I actually hadn’t been to a salon in my life.
“Ohhhh,” she cooed maliciously, a smirk slowly spreading across her face. “That’s smart.” She
laughed and sauntered down the hall.
What she failed to tell me was that Hef had an open tab at the José Eber Salon in Beverly Hills,
and all the girlfriends had their hair and nails professionally done there several times a week. None
of the girls had bothered to share this piece of information with me, because keeping me as homely as
possible was in their best interests.
Finally, I found out about the salon privileges when Vicky had lost patience with me using the
strong-smelling dye in our shared bathroom.
“You know you don’t have to do your own hair, right?” she finally snapped.
When I arrived at the José Eber Salon, it was like arriving in a whole new world. The staff
whisked me into the salon and immediately changed my bright gold hair into the light platinum blond
Hef loved. They straightened my naturally frizzy mane and planted long acrylic nails on top of my
short ones.
Meanwhile, months of utilizing the mansion’s gym and tanning beds had taken about 10 pounds
off my figure and bronzed my skin into a smooth, perfect tan. Hef’s dentist had given me a bleaching
kit for my teeth, which gave my smile a perfect bright Hollywood glow.
The pictures we received the morning after each of our club nights out provided me with
countless opportunities to study how I photographed. I quickly set about honing my makeup skills
(which were virtually nonexistent before the mansion). During my first few months there, I don’t think
I wore much besides powder and maybe a little mascara. Compared to the Playmates’ carefully
contoured faces, my sparse and natural look wasn’t cutting it. My work-free days gave me hours and
hours to shop for and experiment with makeup. I learned how to make my lips look bigger, my eyes
more catlike, and my eyebrows fuller and more defined. I felt like I was finally beginning to look like
the glamorous Playmate I had always wanted to be!
Staring at my photos, though, I knew there was one last thing to fix. I’d never really been fond of
my nose—it was a little too big for my taste, but I rarely thought about it. It wasn’t until I started
seeing countless pictures of myself day after day that I realized it photographed even bigger than it
was. I compared myself with the Playmates in our group photos—most of whom had tiny,
unnoticeable noses. Hef’s favorite girls had “baby faces” with upturned snub noses. I started to feel
like it was about time I did something about it.
While plastic surgery was a common request among the girlfriends, I was still terrified to