They called me 'Big boobs Katia' in high school," says Katia (Kats) Corriveau, as she shows me her nude picture in the May issue of Playboy magazine, which features "The Girls of Canada."
"But it's not like that's who I really was. I didn't go around with cleavage hanging out or anything."
In Grade 7, she was "flat as a pancake and dying to be a woman." By Grade 9, she had "34 Ds. Oh, it was ridiculous!" she giggles.
Twenty-year-old Ms. Corriveau explains her ascendancy from Sunshine girl in 1997 in the Toronto Sun to Playboy model with a mixture of serious career-woman explanation and girlish excitement. She sits with one leg underneath her as she tucks into a plate of salad. She smiles as she chews. She holds her fork, suspended in the air.
Playboy "really likes the natural girl," she explains, smiling winningly. "They don't want the pornographic girl, you know? Or the stripper girl with her stiletto heels."
Ms. Corriveau wears a white cleavage-baring top and pants. She often flips her long shiny brown hair over her shoulder. At five foot three and 103 pounds, she is chatty as a sparrow, all bright-eyed and preened. She radiates goodness as she frankly discusses her life, even when she lost her virginity -- at 18. "I was so proud to be a virgin," she giggles.
For her, posing nude was an empowering act. The modeling business is tough on a woman's self-esteem, she concedes. "Sometimes I look in the mirror and think, 'Oh. I'm ugly," she confesses. But the Playboy experience made her feel beautiful.
Talking to Ms. Corriveau gives insight into the considerable mythology of Playboy. Her enthusiasm for participating in what many feminists would call a degrading exercise explains the durability of the Playboy brand and, more significantly, displays the nature of female ambition.
Playboy is not so much a story about men exploiting women. It's about women who are willing to exploit themselves.
Ms. Corriveau and two other Canadian Playboy models, Samantha Speer and Bogna Warszawska, are part of a cross-Canada publicity tour for the May issue.
Spunky is the word Toronto publicist Gino Empry used to describe Ms. Corriveau when he said, sotto voce over a drink, that she was "the one who's gonna go far."
Other people at our table in Giovanna Trattoria on Toronto's College Street watch her and listen to the interview out of the corner of their eyes and ears. We're sitting with a Playboy entourage of 10 or so that includes Ms. Speer and Ms. Warszawska, two Playboy Chicago-based executives, Mr. Empry, dressed in black with a red chiffon scarf, and his bevy of hangers-on.
The evening has been very ersatz-Vegas. Girls. Cleavage. Tarty clothes. Martinis. Cigarette smoke. Lots of business cards being passed around. Some of us were ferried -- there is no other word -- down the street from Ciao Edie, a so-called "swellegant" cocktail lounge lit mostly with red lamps, in a white stretch limousine. In transit, Ms. Corriveau talked about the regular colonics ("like an enema" she explained seriously) which she undergoes to keep her skin blemish-free.
Spunky is a Playboy-brand word. It's a code word that suggests Ms. Corriveau is fun-loving, which she definitely is; that her willingness to take off her clothes is evidence of her open-minded natural girl-next-door attitude. It's the innocent vixen routine. Marilyn Monroe in gingham. What's being peddled here is the idea that soft pornography is about healthy (as opposed to degrading) sexuality because the girls who take part in it are made to feel good about it.
She was one of the 13,000 women who visited the Playboy bus when it traveled 27,827 kilometres across North America in search of the Millennial Playmate last year. In Canada, 500 women tried out. Ms. Corriveau was one of 30 chosen to come back for a test shoot. At the time, she wasn't asked to be a Playmate. "It was the dream of my life," she sighs. "You win $25,000. That's U.S.," she adds for emphasis. "And you get to live in the Playboy mansion for life. Can you imagine anything better than getting to live in a mansion for the rest of your life no matter what happens to you?"
She "sobbed" when she didn't make it. But a year later, a Playboy magazine executive phoned her to say she had been chosen to do another shoot. "It was the most exciting day of my life," she says enthusiastically. She has saved the message on her answering machine. Ms. Corriveau appears on the cover of the special edition magazine, Playmate 2000, Part 1. She is featured in Playmate 2000, Part 2 as well as in the May issue of Playboy. Recently, she was asked to try out again to become a Playmate.
Born in Montreal, she was raised to not be ashamed of her body. "My family is very European," she says. Her mother was born in France. Her father comes from Mont Joli in Quebec. Her parents divorced when she was 4.
As with many Playboy models, her ambition is to become an actress. She attended an arts high school, Maysfield Secondary School in the Brampton area outside Toronto, graduating in 1997 in drama. In 1995, she had a small part in Paramount's TV movie Naked City.
But her greatest success at this stage in her career is her body. As a lark, she entered Toronto's Miss CHIN Bikini contest the summer after she graduated. She won. She then became a Sunshine Girl in the Toronto Sun. "I didn't want to," she says, "But it was kind of part of the CHIN deal." She saw herself more as an actress. Was the Sunshine Girl gig too cheesy? She nods demurely. Nevertheless, she then did the Sunshine Girl calendar. She realized that signing autographs of her pin-up pictures was a good way to make money, so she became her own self-promoter, producing a poster of herself dressed in a "tasteful bikini." She took them around to car shows. She would approach car salesmen in their booths and strike a deal. She would help them promote their booth by sitting in it and signing autographs of her posters, which she would sell. "Oh, it was great. I could make $3,000 in a weekend," she says.
She admits that she has always been worried about money. " I have been better at saving money than my parents, " she confides, adding that she began saving her pennies in a piggybank when she was small.
Her success as a bikini model has extended to international competitions. She was Miss Swimsuit Canada 2000 and runner-up at the Miss Swimsuit International 2000 competition in St. Croix, in which she won prizes worth more than $25,000. "It was always very professional," she says. "Never any, like, thong bikinis."
Ironically, in Playboy she wears a thong bikini bottom in some of her shots. But, of course, Playboy is different. It's an enterprise that legitimizes full nudity and that elevates those women who fit its brand. By becoming a Playboy model, Ms. Corriveau says she has won "instant respect" from many people, including other models, executives in the entertainment industry, parents and friends.
It's a star-maker. "She looks like a young Elizabeth Taylor," cooed one member of the entourage. Ms. Speer was compared to actress Drew Barrymore while Ms. Warszawska was said to be "just like Julia Roberts."
Was Ms. Corriveau able to show the pictures to her father? "He looked at them, mostly at my face, and said I looked beautiful," she says. But she couldn't show her 24-year-old stepbrother. "Are you kidding? He's, like, a guy!" she squeals.
She admits that some of the Polaroid photographs of other Playmate hopefuls published in the special Playmate 2000 issues (Part 1 and Part 2) are "degrading." Photographed on the bus, the women come in all shapes and sizes. Doesn't she think that part of the appeal of these special issues is that men can peruse -- and perhaps even laugh at -- a supermarket-like display of breasts? "Yeah, my boyfriend and I laughed at some of them. And it's so sad," she comments. "Some of the deformed boob jobs are really bad." She sees herself as above those women, however. More than once, she makes a pointed reference to being "all natural," meaning that she has not had any implants. "And some women don't know what sexy is," she explains, referring to the photographs of women who splayed themselves out, naked, on the black leather couches of the bus's interior.
Did she take off her top during the test shoot on the bus?
"Yes, but the photographer didn't push me. He said, if you feel comfortable you can take off your top because Playboy's gonna want to know what they look like. You know, if there's a scar or whatever. "
The only thing she won't do is any "crotchy shots." "I have people say 'Just put your hand down there,' And I'm, like, you know I don't feel comfortable. I don't like what the photographs look like when the girl has her hand in her pants."
But wouldn't her modesty keep her from becoming a centrefold?
"Um, no. Maybe," she equivocates. "You have to enjoy what you're doing. Be willing. Pose obviously in certain ways. But not all the girls have to do the same thing."
She is willing to use her "assets" but counteracts the potential stigma of posing nude by "always emphasizing my personality." Currently, she has contracts with Redken hair products and Venus, a swimsuit manufacturer. She also poses for another American men's entertainment magazine, Mystique. "It's even tamer than Playboy," she says. She has also been asked to try out for Playboy TV.
Her boyfriend, Jason Marks, a bricklayer who is an aspiring musician, helps her manage her career. She gets "hundreds of calls" with offers to do promotional work. Many of them are men who are more interested in asking her out on a date. "I can tell right away," she says. Her boyfriend always accompanies her when she goes on business calls. She does not have an agent.
"I have always wanted to be a star," she says. "I just love being the centre of attention and to have everyone looking at me." In the same breath, she says she wants a family and that she's "just a homebody who loves to cook." It's the perfect Playboy comment.
Ms. Corriveau will do what it takes to get noticed. But she has set a time frame for when she hopes her acting career will take off. "One thing I can say for sure is that I won't be doing this kind of stuff when I'm 28." She takes another bite of her salad, and offers her best Marilyn Monroe pout.