In its 50-year history, the magazine has never featured a Playboy Playmate from the Hawkeye state, but did include four University of Iowa coeds in its October 2003 “Girls of the Big 10” issue.
After statistics were published in late November that reveal Iowa is a hotbed of Playboy readership, clocking in at roughly 18.6 readers for every 1,000 residents, Playboy put out the call for “Hawkeye State Hotties.”
“After the graphic was published in the New York Times, all of our publicists got together and realized we haven’t had an Iowa playmate,” Playboy spokeswoman Theresa Hennessey told the Daily Iowan. “It’s an unfortunate statistic considering Iowa has the highest readership per capita.”
Scouts from the magazine will be visiting Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa and former state capital, on Thursday and Friday to conduct the search.
The only requirements for possible Playmates are that they must be residents of the state of Iowa and must be 18 or older.
Playboy representatives will not be visiting any other cities in the state, but potential playmates who cannot attend the casting call mail headshots and full-body shots to the magazine for consideration.
“Apparently, they’re well-informed,” UI graduate student Alan Schultz told the Daily Iowan. “It’s a fairly established opinion that Iowa City has a fairly attractive female population.”
Currently, five other states have not produced a Playmate also. They include Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, South Dakota and Vermont.
Iowa City is best known as home of the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop, which counts Robert Bly, John Irving and Flannery O’Connor among its graduates, and is located about 20 minutes from Riverside, the supposed future birthplace of “Star Trek” captain James T. Kirk.
The search runs through Jan. 17.
