Venus Revealed: the disappearing pussy of Sondra Theodore

The pussy in question

Several people (or perhaps one, it is difficult to tell with anonymous posters) have queried our assertion, in one of our Pubic Wars pieces, that Miss Sondra Theodore flashed her pussy in the centrefold of Playboy's July 1977 issue.  Someone maintained that they had that issue so were sure she didn't.  Well, so does Triple P and the picture in the piece (towards the bottom, appropriately, of the post) was our own scan.  So, the only thing to do is examine the evidence!

Triple P's copy photographed from the July 1977 issue

This is the centrefold, together with the cover of the magazine, from Triple P's copy of the July 1977 issue of Playboy photographed this morning.  Note, in particular, the position of her right hand.

 Website version

Above we have the version of the centrefold from the Playboy website.  It has no "Miss July. Playboy Playmate of the Month" lettering and also lacks Miss Theodore's signature.

Bondi digital version

This is the digital version from the Bondi Playboy Cover to Cover: The Seventies complete magazine scans.  This is a slightly different version from the Playboy website one as it includes the "Miss July" lettering and her signature.  It also is framed slightly differently: including her whole left foot, for example.

Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds version

Here is the version from the Chronicle Books Playboy: The Complete Centrefolds book.  This version is the same as the Bondi one.  The Playboy website version is almost identical as well apart from, as we have seen, the framing.

 Magazine version

Digital version

The most obvious difference between the version in Triple P's copy of the magazine is the position of her hand.  In the Playboy website, Bondi digital and Chronicle Books version she has her hand underneath her chin.  In the version in Triple P's original 1977 magazine she is clutching a cushion.

Magazine version

 Digital version

More pertinently for our Pubic Wars post, down below she is definitely flashing her pussy in the magazine version whereas in the current website version there is just a fringe of fur on show.  

We would be intrigued if someone really did posess a version of the magazine that contained the non-pussy version of the centrefold because that would show that Playboy produced different versions of the US magazine.  There were different versions abroad, of course, (in 1977 there were foreign editions in Japan, Germany, Italy, France, Brazil, Mexico and Spain) and these sometimes used different pictures and layouts.  Triple P's version is absolutely the US version and not even the UK version, which was identical to the US version with the exception of a few added pages of advertisements.

Playboy has been tinkering with some of the images on their website to make them less explicit, compared with the originals in the magazine, but this is the only example of a changed centrefold we have come across so far.

Anyway, we stand by our original posting and include Miss Theodore in the number of the rare Playmates who did flash her pussy in her centrefold.