Vicky Brago-Mitchell

Who is Vicky Brago-Mitchell?

Vicky Brago-Mitchell is an American fractal artist known in the 1960s as a Stanford University student who, while working as a topless dancer, ran for student body president. She won the preliminary election, but lost to eventual Earth Day national coordinator Denis Hayes in a two person runoff election. She was born on September 30, 1946 in Yakima, Washington. Daughter of a Methodist minister, she grew up as Victoria Jane Bowles in small towns in Washington, Oregon and Montana. After graduating from high school she attended Stanford University as a scholarship student majoring in Spanish. In 1967 she was the first American college girl to appear nude in a campus magazine, the Stanford Chaparral. In 1968 she began working at night as a topless dancer under the stage name Vicky Drake, and ran for student body president with a campaign poster that was a photo of herself posing nude on the Stanford Mausoleum. This story was first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, May 1, 1968, then carried by wire services Associated Press and United Press International and published in newspapers worldwide. A feature about her titled Student Body appeared in the September 1968 edition of Playboy and was reprinted in the 1971 Playboy special edition The Youth Culture.