Bunnies would “bite back” and challenge Hugh Hefner’s Playboy philosophy that “women should be
obscene and not heard.” After a six-year campaign, Playboy Clubs International agreed to a national
contract promising to pay wages to Bunnies (previously the women relied solely on tips) and allow
Bunnies more discretion over uniform design, customer interactions, and company appearance standards.^2
Yvonne Tiffany, dressed in a “bunny suit” and other HERE women picket Detroit’s Playboy Club in October 1963 protesting the no-wage
policy. Photograph © AFL-CIO, used with permission.
Wolfgang stands out as a talented organizer and, by all accounts, an unusually charismatic figure. Yet
many other women like her chose an activist path in the 1930s labor movement, and in the decades
following, a surprising number moved into influential positions in labor unions. Equally important, many
of these same women took on leadership roles in the women’s movement. Indeed, from the 1930s to the
1960s, during the heyday of New Deal reform, feminists like Wolfgang led the dominant wing of the
American women’s movement. This chapter tells their story.
I call these women “social justice feminists,” a label that captures core aspects of their politics. They
believed women faced disadvantages as a sex—a perspective not widely shared at the time—and they
organized with other women and with men to end those disadvantages. At the same time, in their view,
most women needed more than sex equality. Achieving equality with disadvantaged male counterparts
was not enough for low-income women and women of color. The struggle for women’s rights should be
joined with efforts to advance racial and economic justice. Only by confronting multiple and intertwined