By Michaela Gordoni
Melissa Joan Hart could have made some money by revealing her body in Playboy magazine, but she wanted to protect her family and future children.
Hart, who’s the oldest of eight kids, recalled that her brother and father were both “tortured” by people after she posed in Maxim magazine.
“My brother in high school, all his friends go, ‘Look at your sister,’” she previously told Fox News Digital.
“I didn’t want to do anything that would embarrass them or hurt them,” she said on a recent episode of the “Sibling Rivalry” podcast.
“I was like, ‘I can’t do it,'” Hart recalled. “I can’t do it, and they offered me a lot of money, and I was like, ‘I can’t do it because I don’t want my brother to be hurt by that, like the last thing he needs. He’s already getting tortured by me and underwear, let alone completely.’”
Related: Melissa Joan Hart Shares How She’s Teaching Faith to Her Family
At the time, she said she was tempted to do it because she isn’t “ashamed” of her body.
“But then I’m really glad I didn’t because now I have three boys and I don’t need those images out there for them,” the mom of three boys said. She is “kind of happy I made that choice for my brother, which then also translates to my children.”
The SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH star previously added that her Maxim cover shoot was “the least professional moment” of her career.
“I always kind of knew that that would be a correlation, that someday, I would have children that would you know, what do I want them to see?” she said. “And I kind of played that through my siblings’ eyes, so, I feel like I also was raised by these hippie parents who were growing their own pot in the garden.”
She added that her mom confessed to her that she did “all” of the drugs and that they’re not worth it.
“And I was like, ‘OK, great, that sounds like…I like that, Like I take your word for that. I don’t need it,’” she said.
“My siblings have always been my sort of, my guiding light…What do I want to portray for them? And, you know, I don’t want to embarrass them. I don’t want to hurt them.”
“I want to be able to share things with them. So, you know, I’ve always kind of built my career based around my siblings, which then leads to my children,” she said. “…So, kind of in a careful way of crafting things so that, you know, I never am embarrassed about anything I’ve done or said or shown.”
Hart also said she tries not to put too much pressure on herself as a working mom.
“That’s the thing about my job; I get to be a full-time parent when I’m not working,” she said. “But mom guilt, I think, is real; parent guilt is real across the board, I think, no matter what you’re doing.”
Hart took a great approach to the Playboy offer — if only more celebrities were as thoughtful as she is about her image.
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