Playmate of the Month January 1980 - Gig Gangel

Yes, her real name actually is Gig Gangel and no, she wasn't named after actor Gig Young, nor is she a rock musician, nor is her first name really Brigitte or Gidget or any mutation thereof. "Gig is my full first name," she tells us. "It derives from the word 'giggles', because as a baby, I ...laughed a lot, so my sister coined the name Gig, although my parents had a distinct preference for Geraldine." Now that your skepticism has bene assuaged, you're probably wondering where you've seen her before. On our October cover, of course, cavorting with the one and only Burt Reynolds. Her account of what really went on at that cover shooting: "To tell you the truth, when I heard I was going to pose with Burt Reynolds, I wasn't excited at all. I know that sounds abnormal, but I never thought of him as quite my type. I was expecting a conceited movie star, but he walked into the studio in jeans and a sweatshirt and was extremely warm and friendly - a little shy, in fact. He cracked us all up and, well, my whole attitude changed. I walked away from that shooting just floating on a cloud. Now he excites me a lot!" What else excites her? "The beach is really my main weakness," says Gig, who spends most of her time on Texas' South Padre Island (population 300) in the Gulf of Mexico. "I'm an early riser - 5:30 a.m. I get up and run seven miles along the beach. Later, I go surfing or water-skiing; and a short time ago, I took up motorcycle racing., because I once went out with a guy who was into that." Highly opinionated and somewhat "bullheaded" by her own admission, Gig says her future plans are on hold for the moment, though she has had some pretty strong ideas about what she's not interested in doing: "For one thing," she says, "marriage doesn't appeal to me at all. I tried it once - it lasted three months - and, needless to say, I don't believe in it. Nowadays, that little piece of paper just isn't necessary. If you're not getting along, you should up and leave any time you please. Second, I'm not interested in acting at all. How's that for a switch? If someone were to come up to me tomorrow and ask me to play the lead role in the remake of Gone with the Wind, I wouldn't take it. It just doesn't interest me. Right now, my main interest lies in the possibility of studying marine biology, with an emphasis on sharks, which fascinate me. Another vision I get is to one day raise Dobermans; but for the moment, I'm content to just laze around." And we're content to watch.

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