Playmates
Kerissa
Fare

Kerissa Fare is a testament to how a positive self-image can help a woman bloom. As a former tomboy who grew up poor in Riverside, California, the fresh-faced 23-year-old didn't always have a love affair with the camera. "I used to run from it," she says. "I had low self-esteem and alwayws wore jeans with my hair pulled back -- I was 150 pounds just a few years ago! I did my schoolwork and graduated early because I wanted to move out on my own." On her own at age 17, Kerissa learned self-sufficiency at an early age. "I was a latchkey kid. When I was 11, I cooked for myself and cleaned the house for my dad because he worked two jobs to support my brother and me. (Her mother left when Kerissa was young.) But I wouldn't change anything about my childhood -- I'm glad I grew up indepedent and know how to take care of myself."

Given her hardscrabble background, it should not come as a surprise that Kerissa is open to the unexpected. "I love to take risks and try new things," she says. The list includes waterskiing, roller-skating and jet skiing. Professionaly, Kerissa has taken a stab at everything, from veterinary assistant to pool shark. "I've been playing pool for about six years," she says. "I got a fake ID when I was 17 and started playing in a local pool hall. I eventually hooked up with another girl pool player and we did a tournament together and won a trip to Vegas. It was really rad."

Harmony, an empowerment course that Kerissa took in Sacremento, completely changed her life. "I became a woman after that course," she confesses. "I got in touch with myself and my femininty." Although people compare her to Claudia Schiffer and Pamela Andderson, Kerissa considers Marily Monroe a role model, especially after seeing one of her movies at the Playboy Mansion. "Marilyn was sweet and innocent, yet she wasn't," she says. "But she was friendly with everybody, male or female, and it wasn't threatenintg to her. Marilyn could talk to a man and treat him like a person and not feel like he was coming on to her. That's how I feel.

Now that Miss September's modeling career is on the right track with stints for Bacardi and the new Zebrahead CD, this single blonde's ambition is to find a man whose joie de vivre matches her own. "I like a guy with a great sense of humor, someone with a quick wit who I can have fun with," she says. "One time my boyfriend got up at seven in the morning and said, 'I'm going to make you a surprise. Go back to sleep and I'll wake you up when it's ready.' An hour and a half later, he blindfolded me and led me upstairs to the bathroom. I heard Sade playing and when he took off my blindfold, I saw that he had filled the Jacuzzi with milk and little flower-shaped candles. He told me that Cleopatra used to take mlik baths every day and that I deserved it, too. So he bathed me in milk and shaved my legs. That was something I'll never, ever forget. It was amazing." We suspect they both milked the experience for all it was worth.