Girls of ACC have more to do than strike Playboy pose

By: Scott Sexton | Winston-Salem Journal
Published: April 07, 2009

Kim Mizuno must have one of the best jobs in the world. Beautiful young women furtively seek his company in hotel rooms, don sultry outfits, and then pose in various states of undress.

Getting paid to shoot glossy photographs of the "Girls of the ACC" for this October's edition of Playboy magazine sure beats working for a living.

So why, then, was Mizuno in such a foul mood last week when he was in Winston-Salem to interview coeds from Wake Forest University?

"Where did you get this phone number?" Mizuno demanded when contacted about sitting in on some of the interviews.

"The phone book," I replied. A Playboy publicist named Tina Manzo had e-mailed the name of the hotel and put his name in a press release practically begging us to cover this.

"Oh," he said. "Only two girls have called. One said she was sick and might not be able to come until (Friday.) If she does, I'll call you back."

To put it in philosophical terms: If you set up a two-day photo shoot and nobody shows, is it really a photo shoot?

‘Well represented'

Emily Woodall, an alumna of Wake Forest and Playboy's "Girls of the ACC" (Class of '98), was disappointed to hear that so few young women had taken the magazine up on its offer to pose.

Reached at her home in Plano, Texas, Woodall -- a 1994 graduate of Mount Tabor High School -- said she was surprised to hear that just two coeds had contacted the magazine by Thursday, the first day of the interviews.

"It was one of the coolest things I've ever done," she said. "If anybody was on the fence or unsure about it, I'd tell her to go for it. It may be the one chance you have to do something you remember forever.'"

When Woodall made her appearance in the November 1998 issue, she was one of three Wake students whose photos made it into print.

It's hard to say what that number might be this year. Mizuno said Thursday that just two girls had shown interest. But Manzo, whose job it is to drum up interest by whatever means necessary, wrote in an e-mail yesterday that 10 girls had "interviewed" and that "Wake Forest should be well-represented in the issue when it comes out in October."

Whether the number of interviewees is two or 10, Wake Forest doesn't much care. "We decided a long time ago that it's between the woman and the magazine," said Kevin Cox, a spokesman for the university.

For the articles

If it turns out that Wake Forest winds up under-represented in October, it won't be the only ACC school to come up short. Coeds down Interstate 40 at Duke University were either camera shy or had other things to do when Mizuno visited late last month.

According to The Chronicle, Duke's student newspaper, only five Dukies made appointments the first morning and only one showed up by the time a reporter had dropped in.

"College girls chicken out," Mizuno told the paper. "It happens everywhere, but it's happened more at Duke … the Playboy bunny intimidates a lot of women."

Perhaps that's the real reason Mizuno was curt. Getting shut out twice in two weeks could make a man grumpy.

Or it could be that in the digital age, Playboy just doesn't carry the cache it did in the days when your dad stashed a copy in his tie drawer. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Playboy's circulation has declined from 6.6 million in 1972 -- Hef's heyday -- to 2.6 million last year.

For Woodall -- now a physician's assistant -- being photographed for Playboy was fun, a youthful lark she'll always remember fondly.

"I'm absolutely very proud and pleased that I did it," she said. "I have no regrets."

■ Scott Sexton can be reached at 727-7481 or at ssexton@wsjournal.com.