Pregnant and Playboy-Pictorial Perfect

Today we bring you a lesson in do-your-own Americana. If you want to make an apple pie, you must bake it. If you want to make a mom, well, there are several ways you can go.

Let’s go with one of the more popular routes, the one enshrined by Playboy magazine (which, for those of you who still need help, is not called Test Tube News for a reason). We refer to the four-letter word “sex.” But somehow when it comes to mainstream images of motherhood and sexuality, never the twain does meet.

Until now. Former “Melrose Place” temptress Lisa Rinna takes Demi Moore’s Vanity Fair cover one step further and unveils her maternal self in the September issue of Playboy, which goes on newsstands Aug 4.

The six-months pregnant pictorial was Rinna’s brainchild. “I was at the newsstand,” she says in the magazine. “I saw a Playboy next to the cash register, and all of a sudden something in me said, ‘You have to do Playboy pregnant.’ ”

Well, a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do. And it didn’t surprise us that Rinna was the girl to do it. We’d seen her out & about in the kind of low-cut, form-fitting wear that might make people think she was actually, forgive the term, pregnant.

“I never wore a maternity outfit,” Rinna tells us. “I continued my life exactly how I’ve always lived my life. I didn’t all of a sudden go, ‘Oh, my God, I have to be put on the back burner for nine months and then come back out and feel good about myself after I lose my weight and I’m acceptable again.’

“I really felt that pregnancy was the most inspiring time of my life. I’ve never felt better about myself, about my body, about who I am as a woman.”

We are enjoying the ocean breeze on the patio of the sun-washed Malibu cottage Rinna shares with husband Harry Hamlin, golden retrievers Buddy and Annie, and new tenant Delilah Belle, who popped up, or rather out, six weeks ago. And we are learning what it truly means to be a celebrity, which is that on one of the hottest days of the year, the couple enjoys some of the few square inches in Los Angeles that actually contain air.

But, hey, breathing is overrated anyway, as most Angelenos know. It isn’t what a girl breathes but what she wears. And what Rinna wore when she was with child got attention. Try this one on for size: a red cashmere, floor-length Halston that Rinna wore to the American Comedy Awards, revealing all six months of her pregnancy. “I was in a public bathroom,” she says, “and a woman knocked on my stall. I open the door and she goes, ‘I just have to tell you, I love that you’re wearing that dress.’ ”

What do women like about it? Let’s ask a typical former girl pornographer, cybersexpert and author Lisa Palac.

“A lot of people will find it really refreshing that they’re showing another angle to the whole sexual package, that it’s not just about being 20 with a really flat stomach and a perfect body,” Palac says. “Being sexy is something that happens over a lifetime.”

Of course, it does. To everybody on the planet. Except for one person.

Mom.

“That goes right back to the whole Oedipus complex, and that gets really heavy,” Rinna says with a hoot. “I don’t want to go there. We’re having too much fun.”

Fun is good. OK, let’s talk about guys with less complicated reactions.

“Men think you’re beautiful, and from what I experienced, they are moved by it,” Rinna says. Rinna’s main fan is her main man, who appears with her--clothed, if you must ask--in the layout shot by Alberto Tolot.

“I think pregnant women have a glow about them that’s extraordinary,” Hamlin says. “She was absolutely gorgeous as a pregnant woman.

“Of course, it’s extremely tasteful, and there’s certainly nothing exploitative or prurient about it. Those kinds of pictorials in Playboy--so I’m told because it’s not a magazine we have around the house--they are usually done very stylishly.”

We’re betting there will be a Playboy around the house this month. Delilah, close your eyes.

And now, an epilogue: Rinna will do the mom thing until something tasty comes along in the way of a feature film project or sitcom. Hamlin appears on the Fox Family Channel in the upcoming Christmas movie “Tyler Madison Is Coming to Town” as Santa Claus’ son.

Santa Claus had a son? You mean . . .

As for Playboy, the magazine is contemplating other boundaries it can cross on the way to sexualizing America.

“It seems we settle into conservatism in terms of the pictorials that we do,” says West Coast photo editor Marilyn Grabowski, “and so I think there are a lot of barriers to be broken.”

Could that mean the final frontier--pudgettes?

“Without giving anything away, there’s a certain celebrity I’m approaching, and we’ll see what happens.”

*

A Star in the Making: Dominique Swain may be a novice nova, but she isn’t wasting any time catching on to the star thing. Her star was born Stateside at the recent L.A. unveiling of Adrian Lyne’s “Lolita,” which already has been shown in Europe. And like any celebrity-in-training, the latest Lolita--a 17-year-old Malibu High senior--came with her People.

Of course, they were Teen People, which are a special breed. Swain’s phalanx included Claire, the Best Friend; Charlie, the Boyfriend; and Snoop, Charlie the Boyfriend’s ferret.

OK, so there were a few grown-ups too. The screening at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences drew Lyne and cast member Frank Langella, although co-stars Jeremy Irons and Melanie Griffith were no-shows: Irons was saving his frequent flier miles for the New York screening and Griffith was already in New York where husband Antonio Banderas was on a publicity tour.

Other noshers savoring Matthew Miller’s Southern chow were Showtime chairman and CEO Matt Blank, Showtime programming president Jerry Offsay, Samuel Goldwyn Jr., Tony Goldwyn, Randy Quaid, Robert Forster, Jacqueline Bisset, Gil Cates, Jim Wiatt, Jeff Berg, Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds, Mimi Rogers, Esther Williams and Mickey Rourke.

But all eyes were on Snoop, the flipped-out ferret, who occasionally made a lovely-if-mobile collar for Swain. We decided to put her and Snoop through the movie star paces.

So what was it like working with Irons?

“He’s a really good actor. I had a lot of fun.”

Giggle, giggle.

Was your mom on the set?

“Guard dawg.”

Giggle, giggle.

Lyne cast Swain out of 2,500 giggly hopefuls, one of whom nearly had the part until Swain’s audition video arrived three years ago. She was 15 when the film was shot.

“She had great body language,” Lyne said. “She really had a foot in childhood and a foot in adulthood, exactly halfway. Had I wanted to use her at the end of the movie I wouldn’t have . . . because she was an adult by then.”

Make that an adultette.

The filmmakers wanted to return Swain to teenhood pretty much as she had arrived on the set, so they first had a psychiatrist attest to her ability to handle the role. Swain’s teacher and guard dawg mom were always on the set, and a pad was placed between Swain and Irons during cozier scenes.

Swain wasn’t the only one making a maiden Hollywood voyage. New Yorker writer and former chairman of the National Society of Film Critics Stephen Schiff was enjoying his own debut, as a screenwriter. He talked breezily about crossing over.

“I discovered immediately on going to the other side that everything I thought about the movie business was wrong. I thought, I know the history of film backwards and forwards, so I must know, but when you get in the situation, it’s so completely different.

“Similarly, what the movie industry thinks about journalists is completely wrong. They always think, ‘They’re out to get me.’ Or ‘they’ve got an angle.’ ”

We’re not that organized.

“Exactly. What looks like evil is usually a mistake.”

Speak for yourself, young man. We’re evil.