OMG! I'm an internet sensation

Unbeknownst to me, someone who saw my blog post from last year, the one about me being a look-alike for a Playboy centerfold, posted the photo and a description on Reddit in a subgroup called r/OldSchoolCool. This is the description of the group which has over 15 million members:  **History's cool kids, looking fantastic!** A pictorial and video celebration of history's coolest kids, everything from beatniks to bikers, mods to rude boys, hippies to ravers. And everything in between. If you've found a photo, or a photo essay, of people from the past looking fantastic, here's the place to share it.

Here is what was posted in the group: This is a 1967 photo of high school student Cynthia Blanton holding a copy of the March 1967 issue of Playboy. She was mistaken for Miss March ‘Fran’ by the boys at school. Having a great sense of humor she had her friend the school yearbook photographer take this picture!

Someone told me that this story was blowing up with many comments and gave me a link to it.  I had heard of Reddit but had never looked at it, so I followed the link to see what was going on.  To my astonishment, this story had over 800 comments, and today there are over 1000.  Plus, when I checked my blog stats, my original post has over 4,000 views, compared to the usual 100-200 for my other posts. Almost all the comments in this Reddit group are friendly and some are even flattering, so the group appears to be mostly people who enjoy nostalgia for days gone by.  

It is kind of weird to read what people are saying about you and the assumptions they make based on almost no information.  Some figured out my age and wondered if I am still among the living.  Another commenter who had looked at my blog reported that I am alive and well and living in Mexico.  A couple of folks copied the rest of my blog post that described the prank I pulled on my mom and readers loved it. 

Being me, I felt compelled to respond to some of the comments.  One obviously young person asked how anyone could do a hair style like in the photo.  Another person said, "Back in the day, they used big soup-can rollers, then put their hair in a pony tail and spread it around."  I replied, "Yep.  I'm the lady in the photo and that's pretty much how I did it."  I replied to several more comments which freaked people out: "Oh wow.  I never expected the real Cynthia to show up here."  A couple of people asked for a current photo which I politely declined to provide.

I don't fully understand how Reddit works.  If you like a comment, you can "up vote" it and/or give an award.  I got two rewards and tons of up votes so now I have 1,200 karma points.  I have no idea what that means.

Overall, this was a strange but amusing experience and most commenters were very nice.  The only negative is that someone crossposted the story to r/AgedBeauty which upon inspection is a porn subgroup featuring older women.  Sigh.

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For original blog post, just search this blog for Playboy.

I was a Playboy centerfold, Miss March 1967

It was a nice morning in March, 1967.  I walked in the front door of Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland, and heard someone say, “There she is.”  I looked up to see the stairs on each side of the entrance and the balcony above filled with boys, all grinning, laughing, nudging each other and all of them looking at me.  I glanced around to see if there was anyone else they could be looking at, but no, I was the only one there at the moment.  I had no idea what was going on so I just proceeded to homeroom feeling puzzled.  All morning long, boys were staring at me in the hallways and laughing, exchanging comments with each other, but no one would tell me what it was about.  Finally at lunch time, feeling totally perplexed and a bit angry, I cornered a friend of mine and demanded to know what the hell was going on.  He looked around cautiously and then pulled something out of his book bag.  It was a Playboy magazine.  Now I was really puzzled. I had no idea where this was going until he opened it to the centerfold and showed me the top part of it.  I gasped and my eyes bugged out.  I thought I was looking in a mirror.  Miss March was a dead ringer for me!  At the time I always wore glasses and Miss March was wearing glasses almost identical to mine.  How many centerfold models wore glasses???  I was completely stunned, but insisted on seeing the rest of the centerfold.  Poor Miss March had the BIGGEST pair of breasts I had ever seen, so big it is a wonder she could walk upright, and this was before silicone!  Just my luck. The absurdity of the whole thing hit me, and my friend and I sat on the floor laughing our heads off.  

My friend was the yearbook and school newspaper photographer and he had a fun idea.  Miss March wore her hair piled up on her head, so he suggested that I should pin up my hair and he would take a photo of me holding up the centerfold, just the top part, next to my face.  I assumed the photo would be just for him and me.  I thought it would be hilarious, so the next day I arrived at school with my hair pinned up.  Naturally this set off another near riot.  My friend took the photo, then proceeded to print up dozens of them which he sold for a buck apiece.  Oh well.  I have a good sense of humor so I proceeded to autograph the photos for the guys saying things like, “Dear Tom, I will never forget the night we spent together. Love, Fran.”  (Fran was her name.). 

After that first day in school, I did a terrible thing to my mother.  I bought a copy of the magazine and when I got home, I put on a shaky voice and said, "Mom, I have something to tell you.  You'd better sit down."  She looked very upset, and I don't even want to imagine what she thought I was going to say.  I hemmed and hawed as if I were afraid to tell her and then said in a plaintive voice, "I did it just for a lark.  I never dreamed they would use the pictures."  Then I handed her the Playboy and opened it to the centerfold.  She looked at the photo in horror and said, "Oh Cindy, what have you done??"  She was absolutely convinced it was me.  She was in such agony that I couldn't let her suffer for too long, so I opened up the centerfold so she could see all of it.  Somehow, she realized it wasn't me...  

My friend is now a film editor in Hollywood.  He did Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, all of Sean Penn’s movies as well as Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, A Star is Born and Into the Wild.  He has two academy award nominations, and he still has the negative of this photo in his files. 

Me, not airbrushed, with Miss March

Fran