Hot! Sexy! Yellow! Marge Simpson does Playboy

She's been a cop, an entrepreneur and a bodybuilder. Now, Marge Simpson's a bunny

By Mary Elizabeth Williams

Senior Writer

Published October 9, 2009 4:10PM (EDT)

She’s one of the most famous women in the world: an ageless, husky-throated mother and television star. And now, Marge Simpson joins the ranks of Cindy Crawford, Pamela Anderson and Jenny McCarthy -- by appearing in Playboy. 

To mark the 20th anniversary of “The Simpsons,” the doyenne of Springfield USA appears nude and strategically posed on a bunny-shaped chair for the cover of the November issue, which hits newsstands next week. For the story, provocatively titled “The Devil in Marge Simpson,” the former Marge Bouvier opens up about her life and family, and, we’re promised, poses in sexy lingerie. The trailblazing MILF is the first cartoon character to snag the Playboy cover.

An iconoclast in the guise of a traditional housewife, Simpson has always steadfastly defied conventional expectations. As the wife of nuclear plant worker Homer J. Simpson and mother to three high-maintenance children, she fulfills the traditional domestic role of chief cook and bottle washer. But she has also been a cop and a pretzel entrepreneur, is active at her children’s school and local government, and, like Jack White and Anna Wintour, retains a fiercely independent personal style, resisting trends and favoring her trademark green wardrobe and blue bouffant.

She’s also abundantly comfortable in her sexuality. Despite the demands of her hectic schedule and the challenges of being in a long-term relationship with a man who has a crayon in his brain, she retains a healthy attitude toward her erotic life and makes sex a priority. The fact that she’d decide to flaunt some of that yellow flesh in the pages of Playboy is an unsurprising move from a woman who’s traveled the world, gone on the lam from the law, and been a competitive bodybuilder.

So while dlisted.com was quick today to put down Marge for her pictorial, dismissing it as “ho shit,” she herself is probably laughing it off. A churchgoer and member of her town’s Citizens' Committee on Moral Hygiene, Mrs. Simpson has never conflated being a good person with being a prude. And in a year that’s featured Kim Kardashian, Lisa Rinna and Heidi Montag on the cover of Playboy, the smart, adventurous and very funny Marge is the most appealing -- and downright real -- woman to grace the magazine in a hell of a long time.


By Mary Elizabeth Williams

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a senior writer for Salon and author of "A Series of Catastrophes & Miracles."

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