SALON

Friday, Oct 9, 2009 4:10 PM UTC

Hot! Sexy! Yellow! Marge Simpson does Playboy

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

By

Topics: Feminism, The Simpsons, Broadsheet,

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.

Mary Elizabeth Williams

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 11 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations