A conservative blog has dropped a bombshell into a Washington state legislative race between Democrat Amy Biviano, a Sunday school teaching mom, and the incumbent Republican Mark Shea. The Western Center for Journalism found Biviano’s “Women of the Ivy League” Playboy photo from 1995 when she was a Yale undergrad. See below for the photo. Biviano, then Amy Nabors, was a junior at Yale when the issue came out.
The censored version of Biviano’s picture is shown below. Want to see the uncensored version of the Playboy photo? Wizbang Pop! has the uncensored version.
Click to show the censored photo
At the time of the photo shoot, Biviano was quoted in The Harvard Crimson:
” I didn’t do it for the money. It’s an expression of sexuality and it shows she the way I feel about myself. I was impressed with how much say I had during the shoot.”
–Yale sophomore Amy Nabors, on her experience posing for the upcoming college issue of Playboy magazine. nabors was offered $500 from a student group hoping to pay her not to pose; she used that offer to increase Playboy’s fee by $150.
The Spokane Review picks up the story:
Amy Biviano, the Democratic challenger in a high-profile battle for a legislative seat representing Spokane Valley, is defending a 1995 topless photo shoot with Playboy magazine as a confidence-building experience while she attended Yale University.
In an interview Friday, following a conservative website’s disclosure that Biviano appeared in a “Women of the Ivy League” edition of the popular men’s magazine, Biviano said she doesn’t regret the photo shoot but wouldn’t do it again as a mother.
“It was one of the youthful college kinds of things. I was interested in pushing my limits,” Biviano said Friday. “This was my small act of rebellion.”
Biviano, who said she earned less than $500 for the pose, is running against incumbent Republican state Rep. Matt Shea, who called the revelations “alarming” in a news release on Friday.
When Biviano, then Amy Nabors, was a college junior, her Playboy debut sparked anger among some feminists on the Yale campus. But Biviano argued she was a feminist, too, and that she had a right to pose if she wanted.
Biviano, now 37, said her topless photo shoot already was known among her friends and her sons because she’s never tried to hide it. Her husband, Andrew Biviano, was her boyfriend at the time and encouraged her to do the shoot. Not long after her first son was born when she was in her early 20s, Playboy asked her if she’d be interested in posing again. She declined.
Biviano’s opponent denied that they were involved, saying they knew of the photo before the race heated up but had instructed their campaign staff not to disseminate information about it. In a statement Shea said, “This type of negative campaigning is exactly what is wrong with politics today. While these revelations are indeed alarming, my heart goes out to Amy and her family.”
