Two years ago, Maxine Christine returned to her room in CRC to find a group of girls mocking the Daily’s most recent column about one sophomore girl’s mission to infiltrate a heavily publicized campus modeling shoot. The shoot was for Playboy magazine’s “Girls of the Big Ten” issue.
“I was like, I totally would have done that,” Maxine says. Her fellow CRCers were not surprised. They joked that the then-freshman was a slut. “I was really mad that they said that,” the dance and Spanish double major says, leaning forward in her grey pullover, black leggings and pink faux fur boots. Still, the article piqued her interest and the audacious Milwaukee native with a 5’4” frame set out to prove that she could make it into the coveted men’s magazine.
“Maxine Christine is my real name,” she says. “It is how I am known. I suppose it would be much like interviewing Prince. His name is only published as Prince.”
Maxine looked up photo shoot information online and e-mailed the magazine. She even offered to make the trip to the Playboy offices in downtown Chicago. She received a quick reply from the magazine: they had a crew in Evanston until 1 p.m. that same day. Could she make it?
She walked across campus, into the Hilton Garden Inn on Maple, and up to a suite Playboy had rented, to model for a test shoot under klieg lights. Less than 24 hours later, she’d been selected as one of the NU candidates. The next day, Maxine took her shirt off and posed in the library of a Playboy employee’s Evanston home.
The turnaround was so fast Maxine barely had time to discuss posing topless with her family. Her mother, however, supported her choice. In fact, her mother even recalled when Maxine’s aunt auditioned for the magazine’s Big 10 edition as a student at Purdue.
Hanna McKeen—one of Maxine’s best friends and suite-mate from freshman year—says she initially thought Maxine was joking when the two discussed the potential Playboy shoot. Then McKeen thought about it: Maxine’s frank, go-for-it attitude made the choice understandable. This was the girl who’d grabbed a black dildo from the grip of a CRC freshman—some girl who’d received it during a gift exchange—and threw it around the room like a football. After that, people started calling Maxine’s suite the Red Light District.
Maxine says her dance experience made the toplessness of the photo shoot less awkward. “As a ballet dancer, I am used to quick changes and being completely naked backstage,” she says casually. “We do dance in just tights and leotards, so you don’t hide that much to begin with.”
Not everyone was cool with her decision at first. “It’s awkward,” says Rex Hupy, Maxine’s brother, who’s an NU freshman. “Your sister’s naked and everyone’s looking at it.” (Rex warmed to the idea after she promised to let him to tag along if she was ever invited to the Playboy Mansion.)
Maxine rose to campus quasi-fame after the Playboy shoot. This year, the Purple Book, a student-produced guide to campus life, gave Maxine third in its list of the top 10 people to meet at NU. When asked who beat her, she jokes, “That’s what I said.” (For those of you keeping score, the ghost of Mary Desler notched the top spot and the bouncer at BK earned second.)
Still, Maxine argues that it’s silly to call the attention brought from her Playboy shoot “fame.” She knows some of the pictures circulated throughout various campus listservs, and one of her professors was even bold enough to send a Facebook friend request to her Playboy profile. Maxine says she quickly declined.
Soon, she dropped the last name “Hupy”—her legal name—in favor of “Christine.” When people ask about it, she answers in her best Stefani Germanotta impression, as if the question is inane. “Maxine Christine is my real name,” she says. “It is how I am known. I suppose it would be much like interviewing Prince. His name is only published as Prince.”
Performance has always played a part in Maxine’s life. She was the youngest and first blonde Marie in the Milwaukee Ballet’s annual “Nutcracker” show. She spent seven summers with the Pacific Northwest Ballet. Here, Maxine continues her involvement with dance by participating in Graffiti, NU’s all-female dance group.
But Maxine doesn’t like to be stuck in one place, and she feels confined by the dance community. One of her goals is to connect dance groups to the larger performance community on campus by promoting and producing new events. Last year, Maxine produced her first show on campus: “The Nutty Nutcracker,” a dance variety show with remixed songs from the famous wintertime ballet.
“I’m an overachiever, like everyone is at Northwestern. When I really want to do something, I won’t stop until I get it done,” Maxine says with a confident grin. She continued the new “Nutty Nutcracker” tradition this year, planning the show while abroad in Spain.
But the NU performance world revolves around organizations, not stars. Theater standouts do their time, striking sets and pretending to care what upperclassmen on boards like Vertigo think about the fall’s mainstages. To go outside the system portends danger, and to do so while becoming a brand unto yourself all but bars your ideas from carrying weight in the cliquey scene.
Maxine’s solution? Create her own production company. A troupe will enable Maxine to hold a Student Organization Financial Office account, necessary to produce a show on campus, as university policy does not allow for producers to pay for performance space out of pocket. She plans on using the account to produce a show which draws on the breadth of her experience, inspired by a consummate performer: Prince. Maxine first fell in love with the Minnesota singer as a 12-year-old at Summerfest in Milwaukee. She admired the way the R&B star, clad in heels and unyielding leather, appeared larger than life, despite his small stature.
“I knew I wanted to command the stage like that,” she says.
Maxine plans to feature dances choreographed to Prince tracks. Unlike other performances on campus, the variety show will not include performances by specific campus dance groups, but rather bring choreographers and dancers from different groups together to foster a larger dance community.
Maxine intended the Prince show to run in February as a fundraiser for Dance Marathon. She was forced to postpone the performance—until the end of spring quarter, or fall quarter of next year—after dancers got injured and a key cast member suffered a personal loss. But Maxine is taking the curveball in stride. The former Playboy model knows that you can’t plan for everything.
I have nothing but respect for that girl. What she did takes guts and self assurance. Northwestern students are so archaic. This isn’t the fifties. I hope she helps change the culture of sexual fear and repression that engulfs NU today.
This article is surprising in that it doesn’t revel in Maxine’s Playboy shoot. I personally don’t know the girl or think she’s a “ditz,” but I feel like she’s often portrayed that way in other publications. Good job for depicting a more serious, ambitious side of her!
In my and many others’ opinion, his girl doesn’t deserve any recognition from anyone. There are much more beautiful girls at Northwestern who didn’t take their shirt off because they have flourishing careers ahead of them and didn’t want to be rejected from high-paid jobs because of public nudity. Also, I know the kids who wrote Purple Book, and they are just a bunch of frat-heads. Please find more accomplished women to write about.