Three Times the Life Lessons Come With Playboy Triplets

When I heard last week that my colleague Bill Lubinger was writing a story about Cleveland area triplets posing for Playboy, my reaction was swift and visceral:

I whacked him on the head.

Then I sat down at my desk next to his and said, "Can't wait to read it."

That doesn't mean I was happy about the story. Three working-class girls whose mother told them the sky's the limit chose to set their sites on a swamp instead, becoming high-school dropouts and working as strippers to earn money for breast implants.

Now Sarah, Vicki and Rachel Satterfield are all atwitter because Grandpa Hefner — may God make him limp as linguini and soon, please — posed with them for a picture and gave them a photo spread in Playboy.

Be still my aching heart.

Hardly an inspiring tale, but a tale nonetheless, especially here in the Heartland. Fortunately, Lubinger was the one writing about it.

Not only is Lubinger a top-notch professional, he's the devoted father of a daughter. I knew he was going to make sure she read his story because the Satterfield triplets present teachable moments for daughters everywhere. Instead of ranting about the coverage, parents can use the story of their unfortunate choices as an example of how not to waste a woman's talent and treasure.

Teachable moments in the news abound. Paris Hilton alone is a one-woman university of cautionary tales: Don't make a sex video and then claim you never meant it to go public. Don't encourage millions of young people to vote in a presidential election if you yourself didn't register or vote. Don't drink and drive, and definitely don't try to weasel out of jail time if you have, like, a real judge.

So many opportunities to take a deep breath and say to our daughters, "OK, don't do that. Or that. Or that, either."

We can do the same thing with the Satterfield story.

Or, we can blame the messenger.

A lot of readers laid into Lubinger, dwelling on this quote from Vicki, the apparent chatterbox of the trio: "Every girl wants to famous.

Every girl wants to be in Playboy."

Whoo-boy. That got readers cookin'.

"The article is offensive and you should be ashamed," one reader wrote.

"The story should have been about the poor parenting and lack of guidance they received," wrote another.

An educator and father of two young girls wrote, "Even though I totally disapprove of this article and the choices being made by the girls and their mother, I wish them luck because it sounds like the only shot they have on life."

Of course, there was also the guy who lauded the 23-year-old "girls" as "symbols for our military boys who lay down their lives for American freedom." Fortunately, he was a minority of one when it came to the reader response, some of which was sent to me, too.

By the way, it appears that some readers think I'm either (a) Lubinger's mother or (b) a woman who likes to punish men.

I know Lubinger's mother, and may I live long enough to reach the standard she sets. As for Option B, how many times do I have to explain that being a feminist has nothing to do with whips, leg hair or running over men in driveways?

One mother of two grown daughters wrote to Lubinger, "The triplets deserve to be the poster girls for what every parent should not want their daughters to turn out to be!" she wrote.

Her list included:

1. "They aspired to be Playboy centerfolds at age 15."

2. "They dropped out of high school."

3. "After dropping out of high school, they didn't work until age 19."

4. "When they began working after dropping out of high school, their job was stripping."

5. "They aspire to be Playboy centerfolds but if that doesn't work out, 'Plan B' is stripping at an 'upscale' club in Las Vegas."

"Your article was a downer," she wrote.

Only if we miss those teachable moments.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… And His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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