Some of the effects of that moment in the zeitgeist still linger today.'ĭown the Rabbit Hole, which on Wednesday made its debut on the New York Times' hardcover nonfiction bestseller list at No. In the author's note, Madison writes, 'Around the turn of the millennium, it became fashionable for women to appear stupid - to get by solely on their looks and to be concerned only with fame and materialism. The book also explicitly tears down an insidious thread in popular culture in which women have portrayed themselves on reality television as dumb and less than - a phenomenon Madison herself participated in during her time on The Girls Next Door, the E! reality show that chronicled part of her time with Hefner (and fellow Playmates/Hefner girlfriends Kendra Wilkinson and Bridget Marquardt). Madison's depression in the Playboy Mansion reached harrowing depths, yet she felt trapped there: by her fears about her limited professional possibilities, by her unwillingness to admit to anyone how sad she really was, and by Hefner's emotional control over her.

The result reads like a celebrity memoir infused with The Bell Jar and Going Clear. With little preamble - Madison and her collaborator, Leslie Bruce, know what the reader came for - Down the Rabbit Hole tells the story of Madison's time with Hefner from 2001 to 2008 and its aftermath. It's safe to say that after the revelations in Madison's just-released Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny, she has successfully squashed any such questions in the future.

'I was like, can't you see I'm doing so much better on my own?' 'Women would come up to me, and say, 'Don't you miss the mansion?' Or, 'I'm sorry Hef didn't marry you,'' Madison recalled during a recent interview with BuzzFeed News at her home on a tree-lined Los Angeles street. Holly Madison decided to write a book when she was excelling in her career - starring in the long-running Peepshow in Las Vegas at Planet Hollywood, as well as her own E! reality show Holly's World - and yet fans would not stop asking her about Hugh Hefner and her time as his girlfriend in the Playboy Mansion.

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