Did Hugh Hefner keep polaroids of his girlfriends to control them?

According to Healthline, “Sharing the power in a relationship can lead to a deeper intimacy and satisfaction. But when one person dominates, the relationship suffers and the risk for abuse rises – especially for women. Power imbalances can damage intimate relationships over time.” Now, we know it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure that out. We only mention the fact due to it reminding us of some of the latest stories. 

Hugh Hefner’s widow has announced that she’s destroyed his stash of nonconsensual photos of “playmates”. According to Crystal Hefner, she has “ripped up” thousands of photos of women after Holly Madison voiced her fears of revenge porn in a new documentary series on Playboy. Crystal Hefner has confirmed an unsettling claim made by Holly Madison in the new A&E documentary show called Secrets of Playboy. 

The series follows Madison, having been Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend from 2001 to 2008 and co-starred in his 2005 reality show, The Girl Next Door. She showed her fear about breaking up with the prominent magazine mogul and relocating out of his mansion due to the fact that he had nude photos of her which he must have taken on disposable cameras. Hugh Hefner failed to get his girlfriend’s consent.

Hugh Hefner’s photos of his girlfriends

Madison has also unveiled to the public that in the past Hefner had a massive collection of these photos that he had taken of the other Playboy Playmates as well. “I found thousands of those disposable camera photos you are talking about,” Hefner’s widow tweeted on Monday, directed at Madison. “I immediately ripped them up and destroyed every single one of them for you and the countless other women in them. They’re gone.”

Consequently, Hugh Hefner’s ex-girlfriend expressed her appreciation for Crystal Hefner’s decision. Madison has been publicly speaking about her experiences as Hugh Hefner’s “main girlfriend” for years. (Hugh Hefner famously dated multiple women at once.) 

In her 2015 memoir, Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny, Madison revealed that living with Hugh Hefner as his girlfriend in the prestigious Playboy Mansion was full of “misery” which resulted in her depression and thoughts of killing herself.

She wrote, “Everyone thinks that the infamous metal gate was meant to keep people out.” “But I grew to feel it was meant to lock me in.”

Secrets of Playboy

Secrets of Playboy premiered their first two episodes Monday. And Madison said one of the reasons why she stayed in the mansion for so long was because she felt scared Hefner would utilize the nonconsensual photos as a way to blackmail her if she tried, or in the near future. 

According to PEOPLE, Madison noted, “When I lived at the mansion, I was afraid to leave. Something that was always lingering in the back of my mind, I think since the very beginning, was that if I left there was just this mountain of revenge porn just waiting to come out.”

When describing the past in the Power: Hugh Hefner podcast in December 2021, she further talked about how her ex would go about the photos in question, of her and her Playmates. “Hugh Hefner was constantly taking photos of these women on his disposable camera.” To make things even more damning, she added “And these women were always almost intoxicated. I know I was heavily intoxicated.”

“He would make copies of all the pictures and hand them out to everyone who had gone out that night. So if you were messed up and if you were in this bathtub with your top off and some other girl is doing some sexually explicit pose on you and he took a picture of that on his disposable camera, he’d make a copy and give it to everyone that night and put it in a scrapbook.”

Hugh Hefner controlling his girlfriends

As cases such as that of Ghislaine Maxwell are showing us, no matter how powerful or rich you may be, you could still be held accountable for your crimes. Learning the story of Hugh Hefner and his girlfriends makes two things clear: this man took advantage of these women and was surely an abuser.