On the cover of at age 12, an issue the magazine later expunged from its records. In the Spanish edition of Penthouse in 1978.
To understand this specific issue, one must understand the cultural landscape of Italy in the mid-1970s. It was a time of rapid social change, political instability (the Anni di Piombo ), and a cinema landscape that pushed boundaries regarding sexuality and censorship. The "Classe del 1965" tagline is the central hook of the pictorial—highlighting that the model, Eva Ionesco, was born in 1965, making her roughly 11 years old at the time of publication.
In this exclusive feature for the October 1976 Italian edition of Playboy, we witness the visual poetry of a "child woman." The imagery draws inspiration from the decadent atmosphere of the 1920s, utilizing lace, pearls, and elaborate costuming to create a dreamlike tableau.
The Playboy Italian Edition of October 1976, featuring Eva Ionesco of the "classe del 1965," is a historical document that forces us to confront uncomfortable truths about the recent past. It reveals how easily the language of art can be weaponized to excuse exploitation, and how magazines of a certain era failed to protect children in favor of provocation. Today, such images would be illegal in most jurisdictions and would trigger mandatory reporting. To look back at that pictorial is to see not a "nymphet," but a little girl in a costume she did not choose, in front of a lens held by the person who should have protected her most. The essay that this spread ultimately writes is not one of erotic liberation, but of a childhood lost to the gaze of an approving audience—an audience that Playboy Italia was all too willing to supply.