In a society that insists youth equals beauty and that women have an expiration date, it is rare you get to see women over 30 celebrated as "sexy." So when Playboy magazine recreated some of its sexiest covers from the '80s and '90s with the original models, the Internet's collective jaws dropped in awe.
In celebration of founder Hugh Hefner's "policy" of "once a Playmate, always a Playmate," the magazine invited back seven of its most "special" Playmates to return and recreate their iconic covers.
More from CafeMom: 15 Things Single Moms Wish They Could Put in Their Dating Profiles
Lisa Matthews, who is now 47, was Playboy’s Miss April 1990, and went on to be named Playmate of the Year 1991.
Renee Tenison, 48, was Playboy's first black woman on its cover and recalled the "controversy" surrounding her original shoot.
She told the mag:
"When I did Playboy, there was a little bit of controversy because I was the first African-American Playmate of the Year and some women were saying I was being objectified. But I said, 'Well, if you're pro-choice, shouldn't I have the right to choose what I want to do?' If I want to pose nude, I should be able to pose nude! When the issue came out, the response was 90 percent positive and maybe 10 percent didn’t like it. If you look back, all the big models from Christy Turlington to Naomi Campbell posed nude. I see it as art. Not everybody sees it that way, but that's how I see it."
Kimberley Conrad Hefner, who is eldest at 54 and the official Mrs. Hefner, looks like she's pretty much been frozen in time for 30 years.
But the point isn't that these women have "perservered" in spite of their age — it's that these women still deserve to be sexy whether they've "aged well" according to society's standards or not.
Check out the rest of the goreous photos here.
