Hugh Hefner holding the first issue of Playboy, December 1953
A new NBC show touches an open wound in American history.
Perhaps the most important moment in gender politics in America occurred at a kitchen table in Chicago late in 1953. A young man named Hugh Hefner borrowed a thousand dollars from his mom to publish a magazine that was originally going to be called Stag Party. But apparently there was already a Stag magazine about horses. At that kitchen table, Hefner put together the first issue of his new magazine and decided to name it Playboy after a automobile company that his mom had once worked at. He featured Marilyn Monroe on the cover, who had just landed her first leading role in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and was yet to reach icon status.
Fifty-eight years later, Hugh Hefner, now 84, gave up dating two twins simultaneously to marry 24-year-old Crystal Harris. In the years since launching his magazine, Hefner has sparked a profound change in American culture that continues to frame the way we look at sex and gender. The first magazine to show naked women, Playboy gave birth to pornography as we have come to know it—a business that has blossomed into arguably the biggest single media industry in our country.
No other man has had as profound an impact on both the conscious and sub-conscious way men look and think about women and their bodies. From Madison Avenue to Hollywood the way women are portrayed is either a direct result, or a direct rebellion against, the boulder that Hefner started rolling down that hill 50 years ago.
NBC built its upcoming fall schedule around a new period drama glamorizing Hugh Hefner and his bunnies called The Playboy Club. The show, starting in September on Monday nights, is already being heavily promoted as their next big winner. Apparently NBC decided to piggy-back on the success of Mad Men and push the envelope one step further. According to the sneak peaks, the show “captures a time and place that challenged the social mores, where a visionary created an empire, and an icon changed American culture.”
Matt Weiner, creator of Mad Men (and a classmate of mine from Wesleyan), is adamant that his show is feminist in its orientation. It shows secretaries being sexually harassed specifically because that is what really happened. If we’re paying attention, those scenes are not supposed to be funny—but profoundly uncomfortable to watch. He once told me that those women, the ones who were mistreated in offices across the country during the 1960s, have tracked him down to let him know that they appreciate the accuracy of his depiction even if a good segment of the audience misunderstand the point. “It really happened that way,” they say.
Based on the promotion of The Playboy Club, there doesn’t appear to be an effort to show the tipping point when the sex trade was brought into the mainstream and how that revolutionized our culture. I actually didn’t know anything about the show until a relative—a woman the same age as the ones approaching Weiner to thank him—called my wife to let her how profoundly saddened she was after watching the trailer for the NBC show.
The relative explained to my wife that when Playboy was created she was a mother and housewife doing the very best she could to live up the societal expectations of that time. The show glorifies exactly what, at the time, seemed an unfair and sickening change where she tried to keep herself in good shape and remain attractive for her husband, but couldn’t compete with these naked bunnies. It was a profoundly painful memory and she couldn’t believe NBC would glamorize something that was so obviously sexist.
This particular relative is very traditional, hardly a bra-burning feminist, but she got me thinking. Certainly there’s plenty on network television these days that lacks any pretense of information or even art. But as I watched the clips and read more about the upcoming show it seemed to me a canonization of Hugh Hefner himself, the world he created, and the ways in which he has infiltrated everything in modern media down to how sites drive page views (such as this recent semi-NSFW gallery in COED Magazine).
I find it sad and irresponsible that NBC would devote the time and money to a high-production-value series that attempts to glamorize a guy who has done more to give men a bad name than anyone I can think of. He’s also done more damage to the status of American women, both in and out of the sex trade, than perhaps any man in history.
"The Playboy Club"
—Photos: Smithsonian Photography Initiative, Courtesy of NBC
About Tom Matlack
Vocalyze
As long as we’re beating this magazine horse, I want to draw people’s attention to the articles in Penthouse and Hustler in the last thirty years or so. These, unlike PB, often featured conspiracy theory articles about how big government was gonna getcha, and so forth.
If you’re looking for one of the roots of the Teaparty, look no further than these two magazines. The articles were actually proto-fas*cist, based on the idea that the independent little man could become strong if he knew more about the vast conspiracies arrayed against him.
They appealed to more working class men. Flynt was a strong misogynist, with a woman being fed into a meat grinder in one illustration. He also had quite a number of “poop” cartoons. So I’m not impressed with his attempt to be scholarly with his new book on the sex lives of presidents. Guccione favored women arrayed with scarves and giant racks.
These “vast conspiracies” you allude to were often tonic in their anti-corporate posture, especially in Penthouse. I first learned about the Taft-Hartley Act in Penthouse. And in a milieu in which you could go to jail for smoking weed or possessing photos to jerk off to, as well as folks with the temerity to say laws against these things were a good thing—-well, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that many folks would conclude that maybe big government had turned into too-big-government.
Countless women launched, relaunched or propelled their careers *using* Playboy and were paid handsomely for it. No coercion or force involved. Sorry, giving women the *choice* to work and use their natural gifts is a good thing.
This may sound piggish and heretical, but I’m not so sure that unrealistic portrayals of women in popular culture are inherently bad for society. I get it that watching porn can shape a man’s subconscious mind, but most men who watch porn know that it’s an escape from reality. That’s what makes it a fantasy. It’s make-believe. If a man wants all the women in his life to look and behave like porn actresses, then he is an idiot. If he demands that his girlfriend look like a Playboy centerfold, then he’s doomed himself to a life of frustration, and if she is not an idiot she’ll be out the door. The porn industry has not tainted his expectations of women; his fundamental idiocy comes from within.
Along the same lines, I don’t think porn is inherently degrading. If a female character on screen wants something, requests it, gets it, and enjoys it, is that a moment of degradation?
It’s worth telling and repeating to women that most of us men know most of the time that most of what we see in porn is not what happens in real life.
Anonymous Male (#1) if unrealistic portrayals of women in popular culture aren’t inherently bad, then why do we have so many women that feel bad about their bodies as they are and striving to get surgery or do all matter of painful things to their bodies just to meet the standard their boyfriends and husbands are oggling through male media?
Look, I do not think any adult here doesn’t know that porn isn’t infact “fantasy”. Porn IS fantasy. PORN is fantasy. Porn is FANTASY. We all fundementally understand that. However. That does not stop men from asking their real life partners to do something, try something, dress up like something they saw in porn. So you can say that porn is fantasy, in as many different ways as you like. But it doesn’t stop real life men from asking real life women to do the things they see in porn. So when does porn stop being *just* fantasy? Is it when we only watch something and only wish for it to be real. Is it when we watch something and enjoy it but don’t want it to be real. Or is it when we watch something and wish it to be real and then do what we an to bring it into our own bedroom. Because I have to tell you. There hasn’t been one man that I have been in a relationship with that didn’t at one point ask me to fullfill one of his fantasies in bed. I am not saying that’s a bad thing. What I am saying is that while we all understand that porn is fantasy. It doesn’t stop people from wanting to act out those fantasies and it doesn’t even make people any less attracted to that fantasy knowing it’s not real.
Do I think all men expect to have a Playboy centerfold? No. But then why do men have to spend so much time oggling the centerfold when the real woman they have is good enough?
All you have to do is look at our culture to see how porn as gotten into it. 9 year old kids know what pornstars are. We don’t live in a culture anymore where it was a Playboy a month. Men are spending more time with porn then ever before. And if you ever talked to any younger kids, boys and girls, it’s amazing how adult the things they say about sex comes out but out emotionally childish they clearly still are because they are kids. You got boys with an outlet to porn that is sending big messages about expectations of women and their bodies and their actions. Maybe we should make instructional videos for young girls. And in these videos we show them how they can use men for money. And then lets turn araound and make claims that these videos won’t affect their perceptions of men.
Lastly, its ironic how your perception of porn is that the female character on screen is the one calling the shots by saying what they want. You are kidding right? If you believe the female actress in the movie is the one in charge, then you are buying int0 the FANTASY you claim you can tell the distinction between. I do not believe ANY man here is too dumb to see the degradation and humilation of women in modern porn. I do not believe YOU are dumb at all Anonymous male and I am sure you see countless foarms of women being treated like second class citizens compared to men in porn. And if you really think all the women in porn are just having a grand old time and they are just living there hearts content, then you clearly buy the fantasy the industry is selling you.
“Along the same lines, I don’t think porn is inherently degrading. If a female character on screen wants something, requests it, gets it, and enjoys it, is that a moment of degradation?
It is clear that you are delusional and obviously effected by porn in a negative way. Porn is made by men for men. What you see on screen is not what that woman wants. What you see is a script made by a man in which the women are acting… and most of the time the women are coerced or forced into performing those acts.
Call me “Santo.” I think we’re holding apples and oranges in our respective baskets. I simply think men are the likely progenitors of the idea that virtuous women have sex for reasons other than the sheer fun of it. Women have certainly done their part to keep that particular ball rolling.
Glad I caught today’s posts. Anonymous Male made some very valid points, but I do not think his ideas came to a more logical conclusion. i.e., there is , “ahem” a certain learning curve that men and women could really use, often portrayed in pornographic video and mags.
First, we have to admit that there are a lot of sexual “positions or actions” that do arouse our sexuality.
So, I think the first part of the relationship is to be educated and aware that there is so much more pleasure than the plain old missionary position. You want “pornographic’?..Try that one and only position for a lifetime.
With some education in sexual technical (learned from porn) the chance for a MOST intimate connection between partners might begin to happen. The entire body is one wildly erogenous zone and is just waiting to be explored. AND !!!! this does not mean that every woman must look like a model
in a porn film.
My ex-wife (sorry to say) lived in your typical white-protestant small town, was (7) years older than myself and was a size twelve (12) when I married her . To say the least, her experience was dull and without much ado. I, on the other hand, had a least a reference point because of some “porno” magazines I found in the late 60′s.
Whispered conversation at night , led to startled looks and some fear of what we “both” agreed to in sexual exploration. This later led to to wonderful shared baths, massage and bolder talk.
Suffice it to say, that a mutual agreement of trust and boundaries led to some really wild and crazy nights and days in the sack. Each progressive step was planned out like a porn movie and left us breathless and exhausted.
It is a matter of perception. About once a week I might peek into some pornsites….OLDER women only!
At my age I can’t even imagine myself in a sexual tryst with anybody but a well cared for lady in her late forties to early fifties. These ladies have been around and really love a warm-oil foot massage prior to some really tasty sex
(name with-held to protect certain parties)
Anonymous Male #2, I think it’s that learning curve that is causing alot of women distress today. They are with men that got their learning curve from men watching porn and they are unhappy. I’ve been with guys that clearly were getting their sexual tricks from porn and it was obvious, boring and depressing for me. And I know other women feel the same.
If someone is looking to spice things up or look for new ways to connect with their partner, the internet CAN be used to look for ways to do that. But it doesn’t have to be done through porn. The internet is a great resource for just that kind of stuff. And it can be shown in a much more positive light.
I think when men want to watch porn with their partner, it’s more about the man. How he can both watch other women having sex and his excitment over that and have sex with the real woman beside him. Very little of it is about actually looking for a way to communicate his love purely for the woman by his side. I dislike it when people try to make porn sound like this benevolent media that just wants to teach people to make love for the betterment of their relationships.
If men want to learn to be more exciting lovers, they shouldn’t do it from porn.
Erin
You certainly seem to know an awful lot about people that you don’t even know. Maybe this is the reason men might find you a very uninviting partner.
Please note !!! I referenced my porn find, dating back to the late 1960′s…NO INTERNET !!!!!!!
The pictures were black & white, and of pretty poor quality…BUT, they were explicit enough to drive any imagination, male or female.
My ex-wife and I did not NOT watch porn together !!!!!!!!.. It is simply , that in our intimate relationship, we both tried those sexual acts that seemed so lurid at first. But with gentle words and ever growing
intimacy, we BOTH expressed our delight and satisfaction with a myriad of sexual gymnastics.
How would you consider a guy like myself….I bought her lingerie that only naughty girls in the magazines might wear..Eventually, she learned to love this stuff as much as I did.
As she progressed in her sexual maturity, she grew bold enough to ask for many parts of her body to be aroused… GET THAT ?????? she asked !!!!!!!
Massage became a very deep part of our loving….warm, scented oil rubbed on her feet, baths where I
washed and massaged her hair, washed her back and other parts of her anatomy with a pure silk scarf, and then made her favorite breakfast in the morning…..GIRL ????? Does this sound like pornography ???????
I am hobbled now by Diabetes ll…It takes a lot of work-up and a little blue pill to help me along.
My current partner partner (mid fifties and hope that she never reads this) can perform with me or in ways of solo action that would make any man scream for joy.
SO TELL ME ?? What do you do for your male intimate partners besides deride and condemn us for
being men….GOOD MEN !!!!