Ashley
Allen

You'd think that having a body like Ashley Allen's would go to her pretty head, but it hasn't fazed this willowy Dallas-based model in the least. "I honestly don't think I'm all that pretty," she confides, "but I have to admit I'm real happy that Playboy does!" All in all, 1992 seems to be her banner year. Since learning of her impending centerfold status last October, Ashley has been fielding more offers than her answering machine can accommodate. And while she's happy to find herself so sought after, the demand is beginning to exceed her supply of energy. The long work days and the constant air travel required for on-location modeling shoots in Hawaii and Paris, various promotional gigs and the like have left this fetching 24-year-old feeling frazzled. If jet lag could kill, she agrees, she'd be listed in serious condition. Still, she perseveres with a smile, since most of the offers - including a film audition ("Bachelor Party II"), her ads for Hawaiian Tropic tanning lotion and her poster-girl work for Miller beer - are simply too good to refuse. Even wedlock has to take a backseat to Ashley's ambitions. "I got married young - when I was eighteen - but the marriage lasted only one year. My ex was a nice guy, but he tried to keep too tight a rein on me. He wanted me to give up modeling, insisting I have a baby instead. It was like the old cliche - he wanted to keep me barefoot and pregnant. No way. I never intend to get so dependent on a man that I don't have a career to fall back on." Her show-business career started at an early age. Ashley was a Miss Heart of the Border finalist when she was just 14. Later, she won several modeling contests, including, when she was 19, the local title in the Ford Agency's Supermodel competition, the breakthrough that launched her career. She's talented, too. "I was so shy as a little girl that my mom made me take dance lessons - ballet, tap and jazz - and it really helped to make me more outgoing." Ashley went on to play flute - first chair - in her high school band and became such an accomplished roller skater that she won the regional finals when she was 15. But despite a host of extracurricular activities in high school, including a two-year stint as a cheerleader and being named homecoming queen, she worked hard to be "an A and B student, if you don't count a C in geometry - I never could get the hang of angles." Fast forward to 1992. Romance? "Right now I just want a man who can make me laugh and who likes to go out dancing. I'm not into making any serious commitments." Eventually, though, she'd like to marry an amusing, self-made man who's as loving as her father was and have one child - a boy - to spoil rotten. "I do like men a lot," she admits, "but they can be awfully distracting when you're trying to concentrate on a career."