Playboy photographer Kim Mizuno takes pictures of an SMU student who was auditioning for Playboy’s “The Girls of the Conference USA” photo spread that will be published this spring.

Playboy was in Dallas Monday to recruit SMU women to pose for its “Girls of the Conference USA” pictorial.

The audition was held at a hotel near campus Monday and will continue today.

Playboy said about 10 women had signed up to audition as of Monday, and it would pick at least one, but up to 5 women to participate.

“This is something I’ve wanted to do ever since I was a little girl,” said senior Stephanie Nelson.

Women who auditioned were greeted by Linda Kenney, a freelance hair and makeup specialist, and Cheryl Stell, a former Playboy model.

Kenney said women who participate in the spread could get the opportunity to participate with Playboy in other capacities, citing several women who posed in college pictorials and went on to be “Playmate of the Month.”

Stell said she is at the auditions to help the women auditioning with any questions they may have and to provide support and advice.

“Every girl has her own modeling style, if she doesn’t feel comfortable with something she shouldn’t do it,” Stell said she advised one Playboy hopeful.

Sophomore Rashundra Patterson said she came to the audition because she thought it would be fun.

“I just wanted to. I think it’s cute and I think I’m hot enough,” Patterson said. “You only get one chance to say you’ve auditioned for Playboy.”

Patterson said she has modeled nude before and didn’t feel uncomfortable at the audition. She said she told her mother about the previous modeling, but not about the Playboy audition.

“If I get picked, I won’t have a choice, I’ll have to tell her,” Patterson said. “She’ll get upset, but she’ll get over it like she did last time.”

Jordan, a sophomore who asked that her last name not be used in the story, said her parents were supportive of her decision to audition, even if her boyfriend wasn’t.

“My boyfriend’s not happy about it, he doesn’t want to share me,” Jordan said.

She said she heard about the audition from the story published in The Daily Campus, and her fascination with Playboy outweighed the concerns of her friends.

After her audition, photographer Kim Mizuno told Jordan she had been selected for the shoot.

“She’s beautiful, she’s everything Playboy could want,” Stell said of Jordan.

Jordan will now go to a costume fitting today, and a photo shoot later this week in Dallas.

Mizuno said she would almost certainly make the cut for the May 2007 issue of the magazine.

While Jordan said she thinks her boyfriend won’t be too upset with the photos, she may have to face an even greater wrath-her sorority.

“My sorority is really important to me, but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Jordan said.

She said she’s not sure what’s going to happen once her sorority sisters find out about the photos, but she said she is concerned she could get kicked out.

Jordan won’t be the first SMU sorority woman to appear in Playboy. In 1980, SMU alumna and Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority member Erin Bann appeared in the “Girls of the Southwest Conference” pictorial.

Bann, who holds a doctorate in education from the University of Texas and now lives in Florida, said she has mixed feelings about her participation in Playboy.

“It’s really difficult to play the guessing game, you really have no way of predicting how it will affect you in the future,” Bann said.

Bann said her friends weren’t too happy with her decision to pose, and that Kappa wasn’t happy about, even though they didn’t punish her for participating.

“I guess I’m still a Kappa, I wasn’t kicked out or anything,” she said.

Bann said she auditioned because she thought it would be fun, but “I just didn’t think I had a chance in you-know-what to make it.”

Bann said being in Playboy hasn’t ever come up in any job she’s had, but if it did, she wouldn’t lie about it.

“If I were to run for president it would probably come up,” she said.

Bann said she couldn’t remember how much she was paid to participate, but she didn’t do it because she needed the money.

“They paid you by how much skin you show, and I think that’s how they still do it now,” Bann said.

Looking back, Bann said she would have considered her friends’ feelings more in her decision, and would think twice about participating.

Bann questions how much impact the Internet has had on women who pose in Playboy.

When she was in the magazine, there wasn’t a lot of similar content, and it was a bigger deal to her family.

She said the Internet has made so much content similar to Playboy’s available; one woman posing doesn’t have as much of an impact on society.

It’s a momentary splash,” Bann said. “It used to be 15 minutes of fame, now it’s five downloads of fame.”