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OK, here's the technique I've used before. I'm not saying its foolproof or guaranteed, but I had this same type of problem over a domain name and was able to successfully keep it despite the legal threats coming from this company that said they owned the trademark to one of the words in this 2 word domain I had. Much like your use of the word playmate.
What I did, in anticipation of a potential problem was to clearly keep the context and use consistent throughout the site in a way that there was a distinguished difference. It is very important for this to legally work to be sure there isn't one use throughout that is different and would be confusing by precise matchup.
So for example in your case with this technique, you would need to use it like "Sexy Russianplay Mates" and clearly break it apart. No where on your site could you use the Playmates under this technique. Every instance needs to have it in consistent distinguishable useage. You might also want to interject a lot of emphasis on "Mates" throughout.
When I did this it drove the other company's attorney nuts cause he knew I had a point that at least that could raise doubt in a juries mind as to intent and that was enough to make them stop their pursuit of my use of this word.
Again, this isn't a guaranteed technique, but it worked for me.
You have to understand one point also, under trademark law if a company does not vigorously defend its trademark it can lose the rights to ever protecting it, so these companies like Playboy have to keep at it even if they don't really sue anyone.
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