Free Preview: Playmate of the Month January 1984 - Penny Baker

Pause awhile before you read on. Gaze into the eyes of the woman on the opposite page. Thank you. You see, we traveled thousands of miles, shot thousands of Polaroids and interviewed thousands of women to find her. And now that we've found her, our greatest joy is sharing her beauty with you. When Penny Baker entered our 30th Anniversary Playmate Hunt last August in our home town, Chicago, she chanced to meet our Associate Photography Editor Janice Moses. Moses recalls, "She was pretty, sweet, bright, refreshing and fairly confident for a 17-year-old." And today, that description still fits Penny except for two things: She's now 18 and she's a tad more confident, because we've chosen her to crown Playboy's three decades of America's most beautiful women. <br> Despite her tender age, Penny is far from a neophyte in the world of modeling. She broke into the business at the age of 13, after spending a summer vacation in modeling school. Since there weren't many calls for models (13 or otherwise) in her home town of Springville, New York, she had to travel, after school or on weekends, to Buffalo, 25 miles away. <br> "My parents were wonderful," says Penny, looking back on that time with a matured perspective. "They had to drive me back and forth, since I was too young to drive myself, and I often wasn't getting paid more than $25 per job. My parents were paying for the gas and buying me lunch and, probably, spending as much as I was earning. But they always let me keep every...