Heimel stated in "Advanced Sex Tips for Girls", her final book, that she was not accepted by the feminist movement; that being too sexy to be an academic feminist and too angry for "women's" magazines, she sometimes had difficulty finding outlets that would publish her work; and that for this reason, she accepted an offer to work for "Playboy" and was the writer of its "Women" column for decades from 1983. Her column was ended around 2000 when the editors of Playboy expressed concern that Heimel's feminist attitudes would put off male readers.