Playmates
Cara
Zavaleta

MTV has been the launching pad for many a Hollywood career: Adam Sandler was a standup comic on the game show Remote Control, Jenny McCarthy slapped around male fans--and perfected her chops--on Singled Out, and Carson Daly, before landing his own late-night show, was Total Request Live's main tween wrangler. There was a time when Miss November, Cara Zavaleta, wanted her MTV too. You may remember her as the wide-eyed, enthusiastic beauty from Road Rules: South Pacific and later The Gauntlet, on which Road Rules and Real World alums faced off and hooked up while pursuing a cash prize. Cara is now touring the country as part of the 10-month Reality Bar Crawl. "We've been hosting ass-shaking contests, guest bartending, signing autographs and hanging out with people," Cara says during a pit stop at her Chicago apartment. "Bar owners want to hire us. I'm goofy, and I don't take myself too seriously. I think people like that." On The Gauntlet Cara helped her team to victory--but would she do it again? "I would feel more relaxed and have more fun with it knowing that I'd already won one and that it didn't need to be another crazy competition," she says. "I would probably never do Road Rules again. It was uncomfortable and an invasion of personal space. I told the producers I had claustrophobia, and they put us in this small RV. We were sardines in that thing. Every mission was scary."

Bungee jumping aside, what really caught Cara off guard was the fan mail. "There were guys who worshiped me and wanted me to have their babies," she says. "People wrote mean things because they thought I treated my on-screen rival, Abe, badly. Abe was an untamed animal from Montana, so it was hard for me to adjust to him. But you can't take it personally."

When the bar tour dries up, and when she's not globe-trotting for PLAYBOY, Cara may continue to avoid the nine-to-five grind by starting her own fashion line. "I bought a whole bunch of beautiful yarn and two looms in Argentina, and I'm neck deep in weaving shawls and scarves that I'm selling," she says.

But don't count on Cara covering up anytime soon: "I love wearing next to nothing. Gauzy dresses are my favorites because they're barely on you. I've never been intimidated being naked in front of people. I read a book called The Nympho and Other Maniacs, by Irving Wallace. In it, women from the past two centuries talk about how they've gone against social standards in order to liberate future generations. That pumped me up."