- Hugh Hefner's widow said the Playboy founder controlled his wives' and girlfriends' appearance.
- Crystal Hefner told People he had strict beauty rules, like no French manicures.
Hugh Hefner's widow, Crystal Hefner, is opening up about the way she says the Playboy founder controlled her and other models when she was living at the Playboy Mansion.
Ahead of the release of her memoir about her marriage to the late Playboy founder, "Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself," Crystal spoke to People about the strict rules Hefner apparently made his live-in girlfriends follow.
Crystal said that Hefner, who died in 2017 at age 91, micromanaged her appearance and advised his girlfriends to spend their weekly cash "allowance" on things to make them look more attractive to him.
According to the model, who married the late Playboy founder in 2012 when she was 26 and he was 86, Hefner had opinions on "weird, silly, stupid things."
"Our nail polish couldn't be anything but some neutral color, no French manicure," said Crystal.
Crystal also said Hefner insisted she dye her hair whenever he spotted her natural brunette roots growing in.
"So I'd have to go bleach it and it would burn my scalp and I'd have blisters," she said. "But for some reason, I thought this was all normal and that's what it meant to be seen as beautiful in Hef's eyes."
Another big no-no for Hefner girlfriends — several of whom appeared on the E! reality show "The Girls Next Door" — was belly button rings, which the magazine founder considered "trashy," Crystal said.
As for what Hefner wanted Crystal to wear, she said it was always Playboy-branded clothing.
"He would tell me, 'Wear the flag,'" she recalled. "That's the Playboy logo and those shirts were uncomfortable and cheap."
It isn't the first time Crystal has spoken about her experience being the late Playboy founder's third wife.
In February 2022, when she announced her intention to write a memoir, Crystal said she was "exploited like never before" while living at the mansion.
"I was part of Hugh Hefner's world for over a decade. By the time I left it had been a third of my life," wrote in the caption of an Instagram selfie.
In an interview with the Daily Mail last year, Crystal also said that Hefner imposed a strict 6 p.m. curfew every night once they were married so that she could eat dinner with him and then watch movies together before participating in group sex with his other girlfriends.