What Happened to Playboy’s First Black Cover Girl?

She was destined to become a supermodel but bad timing and a series of misfortunes thwarted what could have been

Morgan Jerkins
ZORA
Published in
12 min readFeb 10, 2020

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An October 1971 Playboy cover featuring Darine Stern. She is nude and a white Playboy logo covers her body.
Archival Playboy Magazine material. Copyright 1971 by Playboy. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

FFor the October 16, 2009, issue of Playboy, Marge Simpson was the cover girl as a way to commemorate The Simpsons’ 20th anniversary. While naked, Margie is sitting behind a chair in the shape…

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Morgan Jerkins
ZORA
Writer for

Morgan Jerkins is the Senior Editor at ZORA and a New York Times bestselling author. Her debut novel, “Caul Baby,” will be published by Harper in April 2021.