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“On the Internet, no one knows you’re a babe.” So begins the below pictorial from April 1996 based on one far-flung premise: women, believe it or not, are online. And some of them are hot! Today, one could argue that the Internet is dominated by hot women — or at very least, they aren’t too hard to find. We now even have a term for hot women online: the e-girl. It’s funny, then, that even as the concept of an attractive lady logging onto the world wide web has become entirely mainstream, she herself is still enough of a novelty to warrant the title. The appeal of some things doesn’t change.

Many of the below websites no longer exist, but some have been preserved in amber by archival sites like the Web Design Museum. As for the email addresses, well, one can only imagine that they had to be functionally abandoned after being offered up to the masses in this here magazine. The April 1996 issue is one of my personal favorites, a copy of which I picked up for $5 at a garage sale in Los Angeles well before I could have dreamt of writing this. It’s an issue that spends a good deal of time pondering the future to come, and what it will mean to be a man at the turn of the new millennium. In one editorial titled Playboy 2000: A Celebration of the Postfeminist, Postmodern Man, the magazine wrote:

“Will men and women be happier in this new post-feminist, postmodern world? Will love conquer all? Or have we lost something—some romantic interconnection that defines who we are and who we want to be?

To find answers for the future, we need to look to the past. It is time to reaffirm the dreams and ideals that inspired us in the beginning—as a nation and as a people. The American dream is now a dream of democracy shared around the world—the dream of personal, political and economic freedom. It is the dream that this publication was founded on.”

Amid all our pages of beautiful women, Playboy has always pondered these harder questions. While the technology that shapes the answers may have evolved, the desire to interrogate them has remained. The appeal of that, it seems, doesn’t change much either.

— Magdalene J. Taylor, Senior Editor

On the Internet, no one knows you’re a babe. Until now. The moment we asked the women of the Net to reveal themselves, sexy GIFs and JPEGs poured into our digital mailbox from around the world. We unzipped each file carefully and gazed in admiration at the beauty behind the bandwidth. In a fit of nostalgia, one retro editor suggested we print the best shots on something called paper. It worked. We know what you’re thinking: Half the “women” you encounter on the Net turn out to be men. (Strange days, indeed.) Be assured that our modem models are as real as your nose, and wired to boot. We’ve met them in person, checked their IDs and, over cold pizza, charmed them into giving us their e-mail and World Wide Web addresses. As experienced surfers know, women who venture onto the testosterone-soaked Net are by necessity a shrewd bunch. They are very well aware of the difference between FTP and FTD and prefer to be on the receiving end of both. They appreciate a good line—a phone line, that is. They love a well-connected guy who can make them LOL. And they certainly don’t take any guff from newbies. If you write, be polite.

British model Nicki Lewis ([email protected]) above, is a regular on Usenet’s alt.sex chat group, while below, Carla Sinclair ([email protected]), author of Net Chick, hosts a Web page at http://www.cyborganic.com/people/carla.

Sazzy Varga ([email protected]), above, prefers Thai food in bed. An assistant director and model, she moved from chilly Wisconsin to sunny Los Angeles after high school. After a friend introduced her to the fast lanes of the infobahn, college student Lisa Birkeland ([email protected]), below, switched her major from psychology to computer science. “Everybody says, ‘Let’s go over to the library to study,’ but I much prefer to head home and do research on my computer. Sometimes I’m such a nerd,” Lisa says, laughing.

If you have a bad connection, Katelynne Amber, above, may be able to help: She is working toward an advanced degree in marriage counseling and sex therapy. You’ll find her online wherever great recipes are shared. Below at right, law school grad Kimberly Ann ([email protected]) got wired last year while studying for the California bar (she passed). “My mom was online and gave me an e-mail address,” says Kim, who hangs out at online vineyards and has already arranged several job interviews over the Net.

San Antonio native Natasha Terry, below, produces videos that help couples improve their sex lives. A clinical sexologist, Natasha answers questions on radio programs and at her own Web site (http://www.amore.com).

Lily Burana ([email protected]), above, scoffs at the notion that the Net breeds loners. “If someone didn’t want to interact, why would she go online?” A dancer-turned-journalist, she founded the punk sex zine Taste of Latex. Visit her at http://www.well.com/user/lilyb/.

Turn up those desktop speakers: Musician Tess Hennessy ([email protected]), above, creates digital dance music. Stay up all night at http://www.indirect.com/user/tess.

The Rolling Stones have nothing on the gossip reporter known to Houston radio listeners as Lucy Lipps ([email protected]), below. The self-described “queen of the international party tornado of fun” hosts a site at http://www.lucylipps.com that includes advice for the lovelorn, romantic links, personal ads and celebrity scuttlebutt. You heard it here first.