Tracy Vaccaro

The life of a young ballet dancer isn’t as glamourous as it may seem. Hours upon hours of practicing leaves little time for socializing or even having any friends at all. No one knows this struggle better than Tracy Vaccaro—a teenage ballerina who had a bright dance career ahead of her. “I need to dance three hours, four days a week. It’s a feeling, an illumination that nothing else equals. It requires unbelievable concentration. If I hadn’t hurt myself, I probably would have been a dance teacher at the age of 35,” explains Tracy. The tall blonde had been training to become a famous ballet dancer from the age of six. Unfortunately, she endured an injury from dancing that shattered her dreams and left her in a state of despair and reflection. “I had a scholarship to go to Europe to study classical ballet. At the time, I was dancing eight hours a day and I'd been on point for a long time. Well, I ripped the ligaments and tore the cartilage in my knee,” recalls the all-natural model. “They told me, ‘You are never going to put these dance shoes on again.’ And I just felt like…what do you do? Something was torn from me. ‘Wait a second. Is that it?’ It was all I knew.” Tracy was lost and for a woman without friends, this made her realize just how alone in the world she truly was. “I never had any friends. I was a loner. Loner, loner, loner, but I was dancing, you see, so it was all right,” says Miss Vaccaro as she tries to mask the pain. Soon, she realized the one thing ballet dancing blessed her with is a pair of strong, long legs—legs, she believed, would be featured perfectly in one magazine. “I don't think that my face is extremely beautiful. I don't have that kind of look, but I've got a real nice body, and I've got…beautiful legs, so I'm lucky, you know. I sort of have a Playboy look—this fresh, clean-air kind of look,” explains our busty Miss October 1983. With her Playmate status giving her that boost of confidence she so desperately desired, Tracy has her sights set acting and, eventually, love. “I don’t always want to lead. I want somebody else to lead, to teach. I prefer to learn. I don’t want to be the strong one,” says Tracy who was once married to former NFL defensive end and actor Fred Dryer. “I don’t want the upper hand in a relationship. I can’t respect such a man. I come from the school. The minute a man lets me take any kind of advantage, mentally, and as far as any interest in romance goes, I’m gone. I still like him as a person, of course, but I really can’t stand any kind of weakness in a man.” The only weakness Tracy Vaccaro will accept is men who are weak at the knees for her.