Kathy Shower

Kathy Shower is as versatile as they come—she’s a tall starlet when she’s acting on various television programs like Scene of the Crime with Orson Welles, she’s a blonde-bombshell when she’s posing as Miss 1986, but when she’s home, she’s simply Mom. “There's no place like home. My work is hard work, long hours, constant running, but I know I can always come home, where it's just Mom and the girls,” says Miss Shower. “Mine is the old story of the girl who goes from a small town to Hollywood, but it's been more grueling than glamorous. Still, I'm making it. I'm surviving.” While the single mother of two girls under the age of ten is a hard worker who will do anything to provide her family with a good life, Kathy was hesitant about posing for Playboy at first. She had just wrapped up filming her scenes on the television shows Three’s Company and CHiPs—she wondered if Playboy would hurt her chances of landing more acting jobs. She also questioned how her girls, Mindy and Melonie, would feel about Mom posing nude in a magazine. “I talked with the girls about Playboy,” explains Miss May 1985. “We talked about how pictures of a beautiful woman can be art, and they pretty much decided that if Mom did it, it was great. So the other day, we were driving past a Coppertone billboard, and Melonie wanted to know why that dog was pulling down the girl's pants. And Mindy said, ‘Melonie, that's art!’” Her Playboy art was such a hit with the fans that she not only won the title Miss May 1985 and landed a recurring role on the series Santa Barbara, but Kathy was voted Miss 1986 which came with a $100,000 check and a white Jaguar XJ6. Not too shabby for the single mother from Ohio. “I’ve been happy. I’ve been lucky. And now I’m just working toward that little place for my children. I don’t want to keep moving them from apartment to apartment, because they need roots,” says our Playmate of the Year who plans on spending her winnings on a family home. “I want an adequately sized home. I would love to live up in the mountains, where it’s quiet and secluded.” Now that she’s conquered the world of art and is becoming a household name on television, there is one thing left for Kathy to do—date. “I'm single—very single,” smiles Miss Shower.