Nancy Downey Caddick when she was a Playboy Bunny in Chicago in the early 1960s (left) and today. Photos courtesy of NPR and Nancy Downey Caddick.

Social worker Nancy Downey Caddick, DSW, LCSW, fondly remembers working as a Playboy Bunny at the Chicago club in the early 1960s, according to this NPR radio story and news article.

“You know, life is too short,” she said. “Have fun. I really believe that women should have those adventures before they’re 30 or whatever age, but they should have those adventures — that you could look back and be pleased.”

In fact, Downey Caddick said putting her Bunny job at the bottom of her resume helped her land an office manager job at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. She now works as a social worker at the hospital.

However, her experience was not shared by Mary Chipman, who worked as as Playboy Bunny in the 1970s at clubs in London and New York. By the 1970s the Playboy Bunny mystique was fading. Clientele who visited the clubs were less exclusive and the rising feminist movement was making the Playboy Bunny concept unpopular.

Chipman hated wearing the tight-fitting costume and bunny ears and tail.”I really did. It wasn’t the sexiness of it, which was OK, it was the whole idea of the ears and the tail — I just thought it was very degrading.”