Exclusive

Holly Madison's Surprising Advice to Aspiring Playboy Models: Don't Do It!

Find out why Hugh Hefner's former girlfriend thinks posing naked is a bad idea

By Marc Malkin Jun 22, 2015 1:00 PMTags
Hugh Hefner, Holly Madison, Kendra Wilkinson, Bridget MarquardtElayne Lodge/Playboy Enterprises

Holly Madison may have appeared naked more than once in Playboy, but the former Girls Next Door star doesn't want to see other young women make the same mistake.

"Girls talk to me all the time about wanting to pose, but these days I kind of advise against it," Madison tells me while promoting her new memoir Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny, from her home in Las Vegas. "It might seem like something fun and glamorous or rebellious and dangerous in your 20s, but guess what? When you're 30 or 40, you're not going to want those pictures floating around.

"You don't have control over them—someone else does," she continued. "They can bring them out of the archives at any time. You don't have creative control over what the pictures look like. It's just something people should think about five times before doing."

Ethan Miller/Getty Images for BASE Entertainment

Madison made headlines when the first excerpts from her book hit the internet earlier this month. The now 35-year-old married mom of one revealed that she was so miserable being one of the Hugh Hefner's girlfriends that she contemplated suicide. She also claims that the nudie mag patriarch offered her drugs and her relationship with Kendra Wilkinson was anything but a friendship.

"I don't regret it because I learned a lot from the situation," Madison said of getting involved with Hefner when she was still in college. "There were some good experiences that came along with the bad and I love where I ended up today. That's what life is. You can't really end up in a good place without going through some crazy stuff, too."

I asked Madison to offer some advice to her younger self.

Instagram

"Don't be so desperate," she said. "I always felt I had some time bomb ticking and I had to achieve things really fast and I wasn't patient with myself and I didn't have faith in myself to achieve things on my own. I felt branded by the decisions I made and felt kind of stuck. So I would just give myself a talk and let myself know that's not really the case."

Despite the juicy tidbits, Madison insists the memoir is not a piece of revenge. "I wanted a chance to just tell my story and talk about where I was coming from and kind of set the record straight because I feel like everybody else in that situation had the chance to do so and I never did," she said. "I was just the one who was quiet for so long."

While she admits she thought she was in love with Hefner, now 89, and even wanted to marry him, Madison has no desire to see or talk to him today. "I absolutely don't," she said. "After some years have passed, I don't really find him to be a very genuine person. I feel like if I were to get on the phone with him, everything out of his mouth would be PR b.s. I just have no desire. I don't even care what his reaction is to this. I'm doing this for me and I'm doing this so people can learn from my mistakes."

Down the Rabbit Hole is in stores tomorrow.

That's not all the Holly I have for you. Make sure to come back to E! Online later today for some more exclusive scoop.