People

By Guy D. Garcia

She has the looks and body--35-24-35--of a classic Playboy centerfold. Kathy Shower of Brookville, Ohio, is hardly your typical Playmate, though. For starters, she is 33 and the divorced mother of two. Shower had already done some TV parts before her May Playboy appearance. "I didn't have a name; you've got to get known," explains Shower of her decision to pose nude after a makeup-artist friend submitted some stills of her to the magazine. "I said to my friend that they wouldn't be interested once they learned my age," she recalls. But they were, and so were Playboy's readers, who have just made Shower the first popularly chosen Playmate of the Year, and the oldest one ever. So what do Daughters Mindy, 10, and Melanie, 7, think of their mother's new exposure? They found some technical faults with the pictures in May, says Mom. "But they loved the Playmate of the Year ones."