Lindsay Messina - 'Honey' Won't be Bunny
Don't rush into Playboy magazine, parents advise
By Mike Dawson, Times Herald-Record

Dec 14th, 2004. Washingtonville - Six months ago, 20-year-old Lindsay Messina went to her parents and told them she wanted to be in Playboy magazine.

Instead of locking her in her cluttered basement bedroom until she turned 40, they discussed it as a family.

The Washingtonville High School grad's fledgling modeling career had hit a standstill. Donning lingerie, bikinis and clothes on the Internet just wasn't paying off. Her hairdressing job in New Windsor was more lucrative. She wanted to shuck it all. Her heroes, Carmen Electra and Jenny McCarthy, both launched their careers by going bunny.

Don't cross that line too fast, warned her parents, Joe and Regina Messina. Give it time.

Once you cross that line, you can never go back, they said. She agreed. She'd keep 'em on.

Such are the quandaries facing the petite and blond hard-body model, who is featured in the January issue of FHM magazine as a "Hometown Honey" challenger.

Messina is going bare midriff-to-bare midriff against December's "Hometown Honey" champ. Readers can vote online for their favorite honey until Dec. 17 at fhm.com.

If she wins, Messina will be challenged next month by some other "Honey." If she stays champ for three months she'll get a full photo feature in the magazine.

Since hitting the newsstands, she has been recognized on the streets, been hit on more than usual by drooling guys and had her in-box jammed with e-mail from creepy perverts from across the country.

But the exposure should help her modeling goal, which is to market to younger, more innocent demographics than FHM, Messina said. Her modeling agency is trying to win her photo gigs at teen magazines such as Seventeen.

"I don't want to peak too fast," she said yesterday, as she sat in her parents' living room. "I don't want to just be in the, you know, FHM market. But I'll still do lingerie."

That's because sex sells, she said. Her parents know it, too.

"As her father, I just don't want her in Playboy," Joe Messina said.

Her goal is to one day become a TV host. This summer, she's scheduled to go out to Los Angeles to do casting calls for various projects, she said.

After five years, if modeling and acting don't pan out, she can fall back on hairdressing.

"I love doing hair," she said. "I just want to see how far this can take me. You only live once."

Lindsay Messina Bio and Photo Gallery

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