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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 31, 1980)
-c S V %'xg s s' ' r - " ^ _^_ :£>■*« r “ s „■ sX-L'ZrjZ-Zgg : o O O _: nr f-',' „ c jn o r- W- W ■= ~ : £ Js -& £ t* tr c r^ > £ S S^!3 ^ s <u S - -^ Q o cr fa '' o o ^ ^ aT f? _ _cr o J3 *5 -c~ =3 ■=ti „g. - .ia-‘g£ig- "a=£ " ■ - most sent by boyfriends Ivy League. Having attended Dart mouth, he expected the students to act with tolerance, if not accept ance. "I never thought it would happen here at Harvard,” he said, “where presumably people think for them selves.” He wondered aloud if the other Ivy schools, Princeton, Col umbia, Yale, Brown, would follow suit. They didn’t. When I brought the subject up, David Chan seemed amused at the whole situation. “That was great,” he said. "I mean, both of us came out as winners. They got to air their grievances, and we got the public ity. The girls still came. And we sold 900,000 more compies than usual that month. As long as nobody gets hurt, I don’t care. Nobody getting hurt is what’s important. If there’s no violence, then I can appreciate any one’s opinion.” Still, the incident did bother him. “They said it was obscene. Get that. They said it was obscene. That’s what makes the national news and the trouble. I tell you what’s obscene. It’s the liquor ads they run. That’s what’s obscene. They’re trying to kill everyone off. We’re just trying to take their pictures.”) As he left, he said, “Why don’t you come around this afternoon. You can sit in on some of the inter views or something. Who knows, there might be another story.” III. There’s Always a Flaw “Is there such a thing as a 10? Almost. Almost. But, no, not really. No woman, and no man, is perfect. There’s always some flaw.” The woman operating the televi sion camera is giving out. Her legs have gone numb from kneeling and she asks for a break. She stands up just as Chan says to her, “Yours is the best I’ve ever seen.” She freezes, not really sure of what to say. Hell, she doesn’t even know what he’s talking about, ex actly. Then he says, “Your’s is the most compact I’ve ever seen.” You can see it in her face. .. Why he’s talking about.. “Your camera,” Chan says final ly. “That’s the most compact camera I’ve seen. What do you call those things?” “A mini-cam?” she says. “Right,” he says. “A mini-cam.” The take is over. Good thing, too, for more women are coming through the door. An eight. A pair of sevens. A four. A six. Ah, sexism. Chan greets each with a gentle handshake and “Hi., I’m David.” He seats them around the table, helps them fill out the forms, takes their pictures with a gigantic Polaroid Land Camera. All afternoon, he’s commented on two patterns he sees in the forms. First, it seemed to him, that every girl applying was a National Merit Scholar. (“What is this? Everyone here is honory?”) Second, most of the women were either married or engaged. Indeed, it was their husbands and hus- bands-to-be who were sending them to the Playboy Suite of Col lege Station. (“I don’t know why he wanted me to come,” one girl said of her husband. “I didn’t ask. I fi gured if he wanted me to pose for P/ayboythen it was the right thing to do.”). By the time my photographer and I leave, about 18 have drifted in and out the room. I begin to see patterns myself. For one, they all seem to have the same tailor. Each wore designer jeans, nylon stockings, spike- heeled boots or sandles, and either a loose-fitting sweater or a shiny (continued on page 6) Bennett poses for a quick Polaroid snapshot, above right.