Taylor Hale, the former Miss Michigan and the first Black female “Big Brother” winner,” is now Playboy’s Miss March.
The Detroit native, 31, appears in the magazine’s spring issue. Several photos from the shoot were released on Wednesday, along with an essay Hale penned for the magazine, in which she discusses taking ownership of images of her body, after compromising clips of her from the “Big Brother” house have circulated on the dark corners of the web.
A video of Hale reading portions of her essay was also released Wednesday on YouTube.
“Inside the Big Brother house, I understood that I was being watched. It was explicit and contractual. But even there, the psychological boundaries of consent were more fraught than they appeared,” Hale wrote.
“There are corners of the internet where fragments of my naked body exist,” she said. “They were clipped from live feeds by viewers who were not interested in the story I was living, but in the access this surveillance provided them. They shared images of my body in vulnerable moments… they commented on my form, they got off on having ‘caught’ me off guard.”
Photographer Kanya Iwana captured the images for the shoot and was chosen by Hale, she says. Iwana is “a woman who understands what I mean when I say I want these images to be something that allows me ownership over my body,” Hale says. “It’s an opportunity or reclamation — for active consent in my most vulnerable form.”
Hale was Miss Michigan in 2021, and won “Big Brother” in 2022. She also competed “Big Brother’s” holiday-themed spinoff, “Big Brother Reindeer Games,” where she came in second place. Hale also competed on “The Amazing Race” and has been a red carpet host for CBS.
Hale is a graduate of Detroit Country Day and George Washington University in Washington, D.C. After winning Miss Michigan, she was given the Miss Congeniality title in the national Miss USA competition.
Playboy’s spring issue is set to be released in April.
agraham@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Taylor Hale, former ‘Big Brother’ champ, is Playboy’s Miss March
Reporting by Adam Graham, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
