Hugh Hefner's widow vows to reveal 'dark side' of Playboy mansion

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Crystal Harris was 21 when she went to her first party at the Playboy mansion.

That was in 2007. By 2009, she became one of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends, and after breaking off their eventual engagement, Crystal and Hef, who was 60 years her senior, reconciled and they were married on New Year’s Eve 2012.

They stayed married until his death in September 2017; now, she is set to release a memoir in which she talks about how her young adulthood was “stolen.”

“She quickly rose to the top but being Hefner’s number one girlfriend came at the cost of Crystal’s identity outside her role at Playboy,” according to Britain’s Daily Mail, which was given insight into Only Say Good Things, which is set for a January 2024 release.

In the book, she reveals how Hef “picked her out from the crowd” to become “one of his infamous girlfriends” and how “the lifestyle that once seemed so alluring had a dark side.”

Crystal, now 37, said people “reveled in ridiculing her and the other young women which further chipped away at her self-worth.”

In the book, she explains that Hefner “surprised her with a proposal” and that the offer was “one she could not imagine refusing.”

But she was left wanting “to understand who she truly was away from Playboy’s toxic culture.”

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Crystal told the Daily Mail that she has done a lot of self-discovery since his passing.

“I have had to find out who I am without it being dictated to me,” she said. “I have had to not only find my voice, but I also had to learn how to use that voice. My book is a testament to the power of time, processing all that I have been through and embracing my truth.”

Hefner kicked off 2022 by posting about her shift in posts documenting the “real” Crystal.

“I was living for other people before, to make others happy, suffering internally in the process,” she wrote.

“I removed everything fake from my body and deleted all my old photos. I am more authentic, vulnerable and feel that I belong more to myself. I am mine.”

Crystal’s book will also expose how Hefner “governed the lives of his girlfriends with strict rules on everything from their looks to curfew with Crystal forced to compete with other women for her spot in the highly hierarchal system.”

In recent years, Hef’s other former partners have pulled back the curtain on what things were really like behind the mansion doors.

Girls Next Door star and Hef’s previous No. 1 girlfriend Holly Madison spilled that she and her fellow Bunnies were “isolated from the outside world” and the mansion was like a “cult.”