Crystal Hefner Claims Hugh Hefner Dictated Her Appearance: ‘I Made Myself Small’

Crystal Hefner (née Harris) hasn’t been shy when it comes to revealing some of the shocking aspects of her marriage to Hugh Hefner. She most recently claimed that he had strong feelings about her physical appearance and admitted to changing herself to please him.

While appearing on The Tamron Hall Show on Monday, February 5, Crystal, 37, said she managed to survive in the "cutthroat" environment in the Playboy Mansion by transforming herself into who Hugh wanted her to be.

"I think he wanted me to just be seen and not speak, be helpless, be small ... have bleach-blonde hair and stay skinny and have big, fake boobs,” she said about her late husband, who died in 2017 at the age of 91. “That's part of it.”

Crystal went on to share examples of how Hugh dictated her appearance, including that he would tap her on the head as a reminder to fix her hair when her naturally brown roots would grow out. She also recalled gaining weight when she moved into the mansion in 2008. After Hugh noticed her thighs appeared bigger, she recalled him saying,"Oh, looks like someone needs to tone up."

"So, I quickly learned, ‘OK, things aren't really what they seem here,’” she recalled. "I made myself small and just mirrored Hef, and just ended up liking what he liked.”

The California native appeared on the talk show just one week after she claimed she “never had a say” about the size of her breast implants when she was living at the Playboy Mansion.

“The doctor just put them in,” she explained during the January 29 episode of “The Skinny Confidential” podcast, adding that Hugh made the “judgment call.” Crystal continued, “Looking at the photos back in the day, I look like a sex doll from China like it’s embarrassing … It was like props for me.”

Not only did Crystal reveal that the Playboy founder had full control over her appearance, but she also shared that their sex life was lacking in her 2024 memoir, Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself.

“This was a well-oiled and well-practiced sequence of events. One that went the same exact way every time,” she wrote about the way Hugh went about intimacy. “Picking some girls from the party and bringing them up. Changing into the uniform for the job: silk pajamas. The dimming of the lights. The music. The porn. Passing the pot. And then the sex.”

Crystal added that Hugh was “going through the motions” and recalled their sex being “odd and robotic.”

She also shared that she wasn’t the only Playboy Bunny that wasn’t thrilled to have sex with Hugh. However, Crystal said that no one gave him advice on how he could improve his skills. “I think when you have so much money and power and so many ‘yes people’ around you, you just stick with your own narrative in your mind,” she wrote in the book. “And then everyone else just goes along with it.”