www.playboy.com • MARCH 2012

...OBUPO'S RITTNEY PALMER

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Anything goes in the Octagon, the eight-sided .ca~ in which the martial artists of the Ultimate Fighri::..:: Championship do battle: punching, kicking, backE:= body slams. But eye gouging is not allowed-no wants to run the risk ofnot being able to see the ere vivacious ring girl Brittney Palmer sashay across ­

Octagon in a bikini between rounds. Brittney grew up in Las Vegas, another place where

anything goes. "I had a high school sweetheart," she re bers. "His mother was so into the UFC she would throw p' at the TV set. When I was 18 I worked out front at UFC ev, handing out free beer. And now I'm actually in the Octag which is crazy." After high school graduation, Brittney job as a magician's assistant and danced in a burlesque at the Flamingo Hotel. What she learned: "The show always go on. Even ifyou don't have your outfit on, the m is still starting at 10." What she did when not pursuing enli enment through burlesque: "You'd get off at 11, go om' drinks, party till the sun came up and then do it again."

As time went on, Brittney longed for thrills that didn't in buying shots for everyone in the bar. ''I'd wake up the next and think, Really, Brittney? Youjust spent $500 on shots for pIe you'll never talk to again?" So now she snowboards in ­Alps. She paddleboards in Hawaii. She goes off-trail backpa with friends in Colorado-which was lots offun until they ~

to discover bears had invaded their camp. "One friend .. a tree," Brittney says. "I just hid in my tent." She plans to ,

surfing in Indonesia: "But I'll probably never come back.­At the age of 24, Brittney is a globe-trotting dynamo

Shakespearean poetry tattooed on her back. (She chose lines from his first sonnet, "But thou contracted to thine bright eyes" and "Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet selftoo ern a reminder to herself that narcissism is a form of cru In addition to her work with the UFC, she recently enrolled in art school at UCLA. She already has a thriv­ing business as an artist, selling paint­ings through her website; she special- IUU'n'IIIIT (-aDDLII aJOB'l') WI'nI PlO izes in acrylic .&lID I'IILIAW OCI'I'AGOII OIltLAItIAIIIIT ~

_ renderings of classic rock album covers and musicians ranging from Zeppelin to Sammy Hagar.

''I'm no longerjust this Vegas showgirl," she says. "I wan; be an artist, and I'm really lucky to have a passion like Brittney taught herself to paint by watching YouTube vid, and built up enough of a portfolio to get into UCLA. "I been learning about composition and colors and nega space," she reports. She knows that someday she'll proh have to broaden her subject matter beyond rock stars. "B I love painting those pictures, and people love putting rh on their walls," she says. "Would you rather have a portrait somebody you don't know or a portrait ofJimi Hendrix~­

Art school is what inspired Brittney to pose for PLAYBOY. take figure-drawing classes all day, every day," she explai "Ninety-nine percent of the time there's a nude model your class-it's beautiful, and it's art. I'm really good at ~­ing nudes. I think women's bodies are fantastic, and I w my ass off for my body. I have such appreciation for bein PlAYBoy-it's like being a model for an elite figure-drawiI:., class." Who knew school could be so much fun?

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