For those of you that don't know, Penthouse is a men's magazine that combines urban lifestyle articles and soft-core pornographic pictorials that, in the 1990s, evolved into hardcore. It folded in the mid-90's. In the early 1980's, it was no more lurid than the much-maligned local girlie magazine of the 70's, Scope. To be perfectly honest, the magazine enjoyed the same market demographic that ZOO and FHM magazines do now.The magazine also featured a monthly Penthouse Pet who would later compete against all the monthly winners for the title Penthouse Pet of the Year. Whilst the Pet of the Year contest was usually an all-American affair, I do know of at least one instance where the contest featured international contestants. The 1983 Penthouse Pet contest was held in Atlantic City during November and featured contestants from 29 countries.
Included in the line-up was Jilly Hutchings, a local model who was hand-picked to represent South Africa at the contest. If memory serves me correctly, she was a novice at nudity, but was willing to go the "Full Monty" in the event that she was to win the contest and the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of prizes that came along win the title. I have no idea whether she placed or not, but the title went to Miss Denmark, Jeanette Starion.
A local version of the Penthouse Pet contest started in 1991, but it only lasted a few years. It was staged at Sun City and was broadcast on M-Net. Despite stubborn resistance on the part of the organisers, the contest folded due to immense public pressure. Amongst the winners were Miss SA 1985 finalist, Jacqui de la Cruz (1993) and Belinda Hall (1995). Journalists were unanimous in the opinion that the contest had less to do with beauty than pure smut, but that pure smut was better than nothing at all.
So the next time someone tells you that their Penthouse Pet is a dog, they aren't referring to a Poodle, a Chihuahua or a Borzoi.