Playboy Playmate Shera Bechard Granted ‘Genius’ Visa For Coming Up With #FriskyFriday Twitter Hashtag

Well this, via Reuters, is, um, interesting…

Shera Bechard, the Canadian-born former girlfriend of Playboy Enterprises founder Hugh Hefner, would not be an obvious candidate for the special visas that the U.S. government reserves for “individuals with extraordinary ability.”

Playboy magazine named Bechard Miss November in 2010, and she also started an online photo-sharing craze called “Frisky Friday.” Neither seems quite on the level of an “internationally recognized award, such as a Nobel Prize,” which the government cites as a possible qualification.

But Los Angeles immigration lawyer Chris Wright argued that Bechard’s accomplishments earned her a slot. The government ultimately agreed.

…

At the end of 2010, Bechard posted the first “Frisky Friday” photo on the Twitter microblogging service. Now young women all over the world tweet scantily-clad pictures of themselves on Fridays, with Playboy selecting a weekly winner.

Immigration officials “want to give (a visa) to someone who shows business skills,” Bechard says. She also threw in such qualifications as her role as a mute Russian in a 2009 movie, “Sweet Karma,” which won her a best actress award at the cult Fantastic Film Festival in Austin, Texas.

Come to think of it, coming up with an occasionally trending Twitter hashtag is pretty impressive for a Hugh Hefner girlfriend.

And here’s some of Chera’s “genius” Frisky Friday work…

(HT: Fark. Pics via Shera’s Twitter page here and here.)