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.
—Photos: Smithsonian Photography Initiative, Courtesy of NBC
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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.
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
“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.
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.
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… Read more »
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.
“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.” Done more to give men a bad name than anyone I can think of. What foundless babble! He’s also done more damage to the status of American women? Are you aware that status of women… Read more »
Sorry, I don’t see anything ‘revolutionary’ about that. Men’s priorities, men’s fantasies, men’s everything has always been paramount. If men didn’t like the rules about propriety and modesty… well… it’s the rules they created. The sexual revolution didn’t free women in the slightest. Not a one. It deepened the Madonna/whore dichotomy to such a gaping chasm that literally everywhere you go you can see this trope played out. If you go on the street right now… ask 10 guys if they would like to have 50 sexual partners… then ask them if they would have a relationship with a woman… Read more »
I realize I’m not every man, but I’d be suprised if any of the women I’ve dated had fewer partners than I did. I don’t think adversely about that. It’d be child’s play to find men who do. So what? The supposed sexual revolution wasn’t adhered to by most people, men or women, even in its putative hey-day. The ’60s weren’t as ’60s as the media told people they were.
I agree Sara. There is nothing “sexually revolutionary” about it. Or about Hugh Hefner. Why would men need another man to sell them ideas about “fantasy” anyway? Wouldn’t we all be better off if our fantasies came from within *us*. I sometimes wonder how much sexual content that is out there is because of what would have been our “true” fantasies. Or because someone that wanted to push the envelop more then it had been pushed created this “fantasy”, and other people latched onto it because of simply being exposed to it in a media intelligent world.
Playboy may be revolutionary is that it did, for the first time in the modern era, emphasize men’s essential general biological approach to women, as discomforting as that may have been for women. The modern vision of marriage, relationships, and so on, by contrast, basically follows what’s called the female reproductive strategy in evolutionary psychology. So I think Sara’s wrong. Women DO control the world of relationships. They’re the ones with the actual power there. Men breach the female vision when they play or cheat, but women often do too, secretly, often mating with a sexier man, while relying on… Read more »
BTW, both my wife and I have had well over 50 partners. We were hippies.
Well if we are going to put this In terms of pure evolutionary psychology, if we followed the ideal male approach, we’d have chaos. We wouldn’t have a civilization. At the very least we’d have fatherless societies where men mostly associate among themselves in their own groups, impregnate multiple females, but do not participate in child rearing. (some inner city communities have aspects of that model and I’m sure we’d all agree, it’s a problem) Or at worst, we’d have what happens in every society, in every time, whenever the social contract is broken: lots and lots of rapes (think… Read more »
I agree with this pretty much, but I wanted to refute the idea that it’s all men’s plan. Not hardly. Actually the behavior of very rich (eg. Hef) and very poor (e.g. inner city) men proves that ev psych is likely true. In these circumstances, the men cannot be controlled by women, and they act in ways ev psych would predict. Both of these levels are low sex ratio (too few men) as well, also making “bad” behavior more likely.
So it sounds like we would agree that women controlling men is overall, good for the species? Chaos is only good for a few men (warlords, Hef) and pretty bad for everyone else, including other men. One could argue that female control evolved because it is adaptive for men as well as women. Men are more likely to have offspring that survive in a stable community. If the women they are impregnate are being wantonly abused, starved or killed, not many children will survive. Also, if warlords are accumulating vast harems, most men are going without women at all and… Read more »
Also there are actually 3 male reproductive strategies seen in nature. Often these strategies exist among different males in the same species. — the alpha male strategy: be the biggest, strongest male and accumulate a large harem. — the good guy strategy: get one female and guard her ceaselessly. — the sneaker strategy: impregnate females belonging to other males In deer and elk populations, for example, while the alpha male is fighting with another would-be alpha, another male may sneak in and mate with the females in the harem. Interestingly, the females mate willingly with the sneaker, proving that being… Read more »
Or in the same male. 😉
Henry said: “Playboy may be revolutionary is that it did, for the first time in the modern era, emphasize men’s essential general biological approach to women, as discomforting as that may have been for women” So men didn’t already know why they liked women until Hef told them?? I like how you downplay it all by just calling it “discomforting”. It’s not a matter of “discomforting”. Men don’t want to be used for their money, even if they sometimes are. Women don’t want to be used for their bodies, even if they sometimes are. All of us should strive not… Read more »
Hey, why does Cory get a pink box-comment, and the rest of us get white or grey?
A woman friend lately suggested I pick up a Maxim. Actually, I found it much more insinuating and nasty than my memories of Playboy. Very little intellectual content, and much more of a conniving “play-ah” ethic (even though the Maxim didn’t seem to have any nude bodies in it.) No fiction (as a fiction writer occasionally, I wanted to see if it was a potential market.) The problem with it (as compared to PB) is that it just reeks of pick-up-artist stuff. I’ve always been fairly independent in my personhood, and also don’t like the emphasis on team sports: I’m… Read more »
This may point to a key problem. The real problem may be men in groups. Since I have mainly female friends, I haven’t had to deal with this much.
What happens to Playboy models after their time?
Apparently they die old and alone with no one to check on their mummified bodies for over a year.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/05/former-playboy-playmates-family-shocked-her-mummified-body-went-undiscovered-for-nearly-a-year.html
Reality is, Hef and company don’t give a shit about the vast majority of the women who go through their company.
Or they get deported…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11046018/ns/msnbc_tv-the_ed_show/t/former-playboy-playmate-deported/
Again, does Hef give a shit? No. Smarmy Tucker Carlson makes a mockery of her.
Because Playboy should actually spend money the extradition of an independent contractor that has completed a job. Tell me what other companies have ever intervened when a former contractor has gotten been deported due to visa problems? I am sure you will find some but it won’t be a lot compared to the ones that just let them get deported!
I agree with you. It’s Hef fault that the 82 year old women lived alone and died by herself. Hef and Playboy should have kept tabs on her the 50 or 60 odd years after she did the shoot.
It would not be a big thing but Playboy makes this huge scene saying how they are such a ‘family’ and ‘once a playmate… always a playmate.’ He has made it seem like he gives a shit when in fact he doesn’t. He is a user, like any other pornographer and should own up to that fact instead of trying to put forth a ‘wholesome’ or ‘caring’ image. Also, they made this gloating tribute of a documentary about Hef where they make him seem like the second coming of Jesus. They go on and on and on about how awesome… Read more »
Well, I do remember the Madeline Murray OHare interview, so that’s one. I know that there’ve been others. I don’t think I’ve looked at PB much since the 70s.
Henry, I wasn’t tryign to claim that there were no interviews with women. What I did say, and found ironic, is that *most* of the interviews were centered around men while all the pages of Playboy were centered around female looks. So it wasn’t even like they were making a magazine geared to a man’s interest in a woman’s body AND mind. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to interview more women as well as showcase their bodies if the magazine was really about female freedom? The occasional article interview with a woman is a far cry from female liberalism.… Read more »
Actually PB did interview the women they took pictures of. The interviews were pretty infantile, however, and had the feeling of being concocted. Sexual preferences. Goals. Etc. None of the women said they were looking forward to a permanent relationship. All made them seem sexually available, and without a relationship.
While you’re making my point for me, the portion of the articles i was refering to is the famous “interview” page. The one you orginally addressed in your comment about Madeline Murray OHare being interviewed. The one where alot of men say they read Playboy for exactly these well written articles yet these articles focus mainly on male accomplishment and success in a positive way while reducing women to the token t&a. I have no doubt that there were numerous fluff written about the girls in the magazine about how much they loved teddy bears and blow jobs. However this… Read more »
Yeh, I like to be fair. I’m not always opposed to you. I’m not sure the interviews (the serious ones) were always useless. They interviewed the horrible George Lincoln Rockwell once (American NAZI Party.)
Henry, where did I say the interviews where useless? I think you are missing the point in what I am saying.
Give it a rest, Erin.
Childish and rude response Henry. You’ve always had the ability to “give it a rest” by simply ceasing to respond to any part of the conversation you were tired of talking about. I personally thought we were mearly having a discussion.
Well I thought you were taking a parental tone. The truth is, I tend to reply in generalities. I don’t always choose to follow a direct line of argument. I’ll probably always be this way. 🙂
Since you were looking so assiduosly, you might have noticed Playboy’s slogan: “Entertainment for Men.”
Absolutely! By why does “entertainment for men” have to be only about women’s bodies? If men find value in women beyond their bodies,why wouldn’t they *want* articles about women’s minds too to go along with those bodies? Entertaiment for men doesn’t have to be about reducing women to the sum of their body parts does it?
I am always annoyed when people act like porn was a liberation for female expression. When porn was really another form of bondage for women. Because porn never was about celebrating women’s sexuality as it is in it’s natural form, as it is in the things that women specifically like. If porn was really about women as human beings with needs and desire of their own, then we wouldn’t have the type of porn we have today and we wouldn’t have had Hugh’s version of sexuality sold to us. Porn was always about what men wanted and their fantasies. Porn… Read more »
“I am always annoyed when people act like porn was a liberation for female expression. When porn was really another form of bondage for women. Because porn never was about celebrating women’s sexuality as it is in it’s natural form, as it is in the things that women specifically like. If porn was really about women as human beings with needs and desire of their own, then we wouldn’t have the type of porn we have today and we wouldn’t have had Hugh’s version of sexuality sold to us. Porn was always about what men wanted and their fantasies. Porn… Read more »
“So porn the majority of heterosexual porn produced is about what men want and our fantasies? So what? Most of romance novels and literotica is about what women want and their fantasies! Is that such a big deal if we all acknowledge that they are fantasies and not reality.” In fact, if you enjoy the letters pages of Playboy, Penthouse, etc., I would recommend you check out just about anything from the “erotic fiction” section of your local public library, at least the libraries in your average metropolitan library district. 99% of the books are written by women or under… Read more »
Those aren’t comparable. The image of men in novels is hardly ‘degrading’ as say…. ‘barely legal’ genre of porn. Also, the fan base for romance novels is much, much, much smaller than porn. While almost all men watch porn I’d say most women haven’t even read a romance novel. I know I have never. Most of my friends have never. It’s a small niche. If I am going to read… it will be something substantial. If I want to masturbate or have sex, I go do that. I also don’t think many women use novels as masturbatory tools. Kinda hard… Read more »
Um, I’ve got to disagree with you on that, having discovered during my teens years that it is quite easy to hold a paperback romance in my left hand, leaving my right hand free for, well, other activities. However that was between the age of 15 and 18. I haven’t read a romance novel in 20 years. Once I began having real relationships, I have no need to read silly books about sexy sea captains ravishing shipwrecked princesses, or whatever. Other than that I agree with your comments on mainstream porn. I have no problem with porn per se but… Read more »
The demand by all too many women, that the men in their lives always find what they say and do to be endlessly interesting, does more to inhibit connection than porn ever could. I can’t pretend to know anything about romance novels—-would “Rebecca” be considered one?—but if there are heroines in this genre that can take the candor I’ve outlined beforehand and learn from it, I’d say that ‘s a character that many real women ought to take cues from.
The typical “boddice ripper” romance novel is quite interesting from a sociological perspective. I’m not talking about the tame Harlequin style novels where sex scenes are very tame or only mildly suggested. I’m talking about the really explicit, juicy ones. The sex in those novels is quite raw and often has nothing to do with a relationship initially. Usually the female character is an innocent young woman put in some horrible situation (shipwrecked, kidnapped, lost on a safari — yes I remember one involving a safari!) where she is rescued, sort of, by a very manly man. She’s totally in… Read more »
And men have done the lion’s share of inducing the guilt so many women feel on the subject of sex as its own justification. I simply feel pornography is a poor place to start and continue a conversation on why women are constrained about enjoying themselves.
What the hell are you talking about? Porn is hugely driving the sex = shame for women train.
Look at some titles:
College Sluts Get Used- not say… College Ladies Making Love
Busty Slut Get *ucked
Latina Getting Rammed by her ‘Papi’ – Nice touch of racism in there too… add that with the ‘urge for ‘ BBCs.
Need I go on?
“[Porn] leaves me feeling bitter toward men when I don’t want to feel that way.”
Don’t make me laugh!! You derive the plupart of your self-validation from this embitterment. It’s classic Nietzschean ressentiment.
SnakeEyes, I’ve never considered romance novels even in the same ball park as pornography. However, I could see comparing romance novels to video games. Romance novels are a typically female enjoyed activity. Video games are a typically male enjoyed activity. Both can contain varying degrees of sexual themes. Both feed into something intrinsic inside men and women. For women, it’s clearly the story of a happy-ever-after relationships accomplishment and adventure story. For men, it’s clearly the story of adventure and physical accomplishment. While both romance novels and video games can be quite descriptive of it’s characters, people usually don’t masturbate… Read more »
A lot of men are fundamentally very angry at women. You could psychoanalyze it Freudian terms, you could look at it as a social or cultural issue, you could try to put an evo-psych spin on it, but the truth is that seeing women being degraded in porn allows men to experience how they would really like to treat women but don’t dare in their real lives. Even “good men” have those urges. It’s part of the human heart of darkness. We all have sadistic and cruel urges, along with our nice qualities. At the core, we are chimps and… Read more »
Yes, it’s Freud’s thanatos. I like women, but one reason men (as in degrading porn) may be angry at them is the damnable frustration around sex, and the way that women make men manuver in order to get it. I buy ev psych, and think that men have a much more simple and direct approach. Women don’t. Their hormones and brains are not programed the same way. But much of the lack of good faith and honesty about sex can be laid at the door of women.
Really? If it is all evo psych, why blame anyone? It’s just how we are made, right?
Also, I disagree that “lack of good faith and honesty about sex” can be blamed on women. I think men are often very dishonest and act in very bad faith around sex.
I don’t buy EP Henry. One doesn’t need to. Women are socialized to disparage the idea of sex for its own sake. Men are responsible for that trope in socialization.
No, actually men are not. My guess is that most of the “slut” talk (or at least the attitude) is more current in female groups. Sure, the elevated ones don’t directly use the term “slut,” but women fear women’s attitudes much more than they fear men’s, I think. I’ve had the excperience of doing lightly teasing talk (not sexual) with a woman on line and then her stopping once another woman gives a negative opinion. This kind of control may also be subtle. I do think, S (what’s your name, anyway?) that young male groups, where the men are afraid… Read more »
Women fear negative opinions of other women, that’s true. But we also fear how men will view us if we are too “easy.” unfortunately there still are a lot of men who think if a woman has had too many sexual partners, she’s a whore. I admit I’ve made guys wait for sex even though I was really lusting after them and fantasized about inviting them up to the bedroom, because I was hoping the relationship might go somewhere and I didn’t want them to lose respect for me. If I was 100% sure that a man wouldn’t view me… Read more »
Jill, I agree with plenty of what you are saying. And I do agree that men seem to be fundamentally angry at women. If we were to go by porn, I would even say men hate women. I also agree that porn allows men to experience how they would really like to treat women. And that’s what I think makes so many women so sad. Porn reveals how men want to treat and see women. And there are not enough men in the world looking within themselves to ask themselves why. But I do not think it’s part of “human”… Read more »
Hi Erin, like you, I am disturbed by porn. But I think it is important to understand that human beings DO have hearts of darkness and men DO enjoy seeing women degraded in porn. That’s why degrading porn sells so wel! I think men SHOULD ask themselves why they enjoy seeing women degraded and they SHOULD own up to the fact that they have these violent impulses toward women. And they should ask themselves if that’s really who they want to be. Because most guys watching porn are not abusive or bad people in real life. Their desire to be… Read more »
The atmosphere in the Playboy Clubs was very sophisticated and elegant with great food and drinks served by beautiful women. The Bunny costumes were less revealing than a one-biece bathing suit. The entertainment consisted of popular singers (such as The Isley Brothers) and comedians (like one would see on the Johnny Carson Show). The Showroom was like a dinner theater, and many of the clients were couples—sometimes even celebrating their anniversaries. Charming people—not perverts! If the sex-with-a-dog thing really did happen (and I think it is only gossip) that would have been in Hef’s private home (the LA mansion, not… Read more »
Anyone interested can read Gloria Steinem’s expose on what went down at the Playboy Club.
Ah yes, Gloria Steinem. The same woman who, decades later, bought wholly into the charges of satanic ritual abuse at day-care centers, the length and breadth of this fabled land. Charges—or should I say fantasies induced by quacks and feminist social workers—that included anthropagy and aliens landing in spacecraft. Steinem and Ms. Magazine ate this nonsense up with a spoon. Which might have made for a few amusing moments, were it not for the innocent people who did hard time as sex offenders because of such baseless charges. But, as you say, she wrote an expose of what went down… Read more »
I was a Playboy Bunny for 10 years and worked in 4 different clubs. I have met Hef and visited both the Chicago mansion and the one in LA. I know what went on at the clubs and in the magazine…and behind the scenes. The trailer looks very accurate (except the Bunny killing a man and the man kissing the Bunny while she was working). There was NO NUDITY at the Playboy Clubs. There was no pornography or prostitution. In fact, some of the best people I’ve ever known in my life worked at the clubs. It was a great… Read more »
When I worked in mental health, I worked side by side with a nurse whose husband was a beer salesman. (I mainly agree witth the pro-magazine posts above, BTW, and have nothing against the clubs. I was invited to a club in about 1967, but I was getting a sergeant’s pay in the Army at the time, and knew I couldn’t afford it [about $230 a month.]) At any rate, my nurse friend said that she and her husband had been to the LA mansion (about 1986), and that there was one night a week that you definitely did not… Read more »
Bunny Vetetran – I’m a pretty multidimensional girl and I can be “profoundly” saddened by any number or issues at one time. War, starvation, torture, poverty, recycling (you should just SEE me on the beach when I see people litter and track them down to kindly hand back their garbage) child pornography (which ironically grew right along with regular pornography) and good old regular porn that seems to have reached an epidemic proportion of female degradement. Tom’s recant of the relative that was “profoundly saddened” touched me personally. She wasn’t out trying to elicit attention from other men. She was… Read more »
It’s facile, though certainly convenient for feminists, to assume admiration and lust for one’s spouse and a young woman pictured in Playboy, are somehow mutually exclusive. If this is the standard of monogamy that men—-and women, for that matter—-have been expected to live up to, “true…in heart, mind, body and soul,” with nary a twinge of attraction to anyone else, perhaps actual adultery is more salubrious than even Larry Flynt supposes.
As a feminist, I have no problem with porn… that has some basis in reality.. amateur in particular. It showcases real people having real sex. When porn became such a commodified thing that twisted what sex is and should be… that is where it falls off the rails. Too many young men get their sex education from mainstream gonzo porn on free ‘tube’ sites which gives startling false ideas about women’s bodies, sexual positions (ones that look good on a camera vs. ones practical in real life), and women’s sexual agency or availability. The women who are patently against all… Read more »
You’re welcome to sue Pamela Paul for trademark infringement over what’s a real feminist. You did, however, a handy job of **not** answering my point.
Bunny, go to playboy.com right now. See what they have up. Truckloads of makeup, teased hair, and not a single natural breast to be seen.
This is their legacy. It’s just porn. Plain’ and simple. And very ‘mainstream’ photoshopped and whitewashed porn.
This is in response to Sara’s as well as Cory Huff’s earlier post: I know this is going to sound troll-ish, but I don’t mean it to be. I’m just trying to see where the boundaries are: Could you give your working definition of “porn”? Is there any kind of sexually explicit or nude images that would not be considered porn? Maybe it’s a function of how explicit media images have become or how big the adult movie industry has become, but I tend to think of Playboy as hardly in the porn category at all. If Playboy is just… Read more »
The envelope keeps getting pushed to the point that obscenity really doesn’t mean a lot anymore. There is really no line anymore. What is porn to one person is harmless to another. This is just the way it is. The problems I have with Playboy (I cannot speak for the other commenter) is that Playboy is relentlessly trying to put forth this fake image of photoshopped Barbiezons that in no way resemble even the models that the picture takes before being sent to the editing department. And that standard of airbrushed, soft glow monstrosity has seeped deeply into mainstream media…… Read more »
We’ve always known the photos are touched up, Sara. Back when Antonio Vargas drew the centerfolds, our predecessors knew women did not, by and large, really look that way, just as we knew and still know that they usually don’t effect those poses any more than they read the books they claim to in the bios. If you still want to be offended by porn (in contrast to your earlier averment that as a feminist, you have no problem with it), you’re welcome to do that. But we know it’s fake, you know we know that and you should retire… Read more »
Seeing an article or two about how photoshopping exists does not undue the literal brainwashing of seeing commercial images 24/7, about 3,000- 4,000 per day. We live in an advertising world that first commandment is that sex sells… and not ‘regular sex’ with ‘regular people’… GOSH, how boring, real people? It has been shown to affect the way people perceive attractiveness in themselves and in others in a myraid of ways. If what you say is true… that everyone knows this stuff is fake… why did the Unilever Dove commercial about it make such waves. The commercial went viral and… Read more »
I may sound like a Puritan here, but I can’t discuss the intellectual validity of Hugh Hefener as a moving force in the feminist movement.
This, to me, is a dizzying new low. Dress up Playboy with intellectual articles all you want, it’s still pornography, and pornography is wrong. It’s wrong for teaching young boys incorrect ideas of sex and wrong for enticing men to pull away from their wives.
Men who would pull away from their wives need little enticement. They would have done so without Hefner, of that there is no doubt. Especially if other men are upbraiding them with the idea that playing once in awhile is not something grown men do. It’s bad enough that they hear that from their wives.
For all that, I agree that the idea of Hugh Hefner having something to offer feminism is risible.
“It’s wrong for teaching young boys incorrect ideas of sex and wrong for enticing men to pull away from their wives.” Okay, I’ll bite, because I’m really fascinated by the whole concept – if Playboy provides “incorrect” ideas of sex for boys, what are the “correct” ideas of sex that men and boys are supposed to have? A related question, optional of course: If I have an incorrect view of sex, what should society do with me or to me? The men-pulling-away-from-their-wives part also has me wondering. Presumably this refers to married men and not all men, of course. I… Read more »
I’m not really comfortable portraying Hefner as some kind of sexual revolution pioneer, but I would point out that his creation of Playboy was a kind of rebellion against many of the expectations of men in the 1950’s. Granted, not exactly a gender revolution, but Hefner in his way was and is rebelling against the straightjacket definition of masculinity of the baby boom era. The average age of first marriage for men in 1953 was around 21. In 1953, if you were an unmarried man at 30, many people assumed you must be gay, or must be something deeply wrong… Read more »
Kind of ironic that men had to create a whole industry based on “ridiculously unrealistic images” of women in order to escape “ridiculously unrealistic images” of masculinity.
It is, but this industry is no more nefarious than, say couples counseling, an industry based largely on the idea that men are either little boys to be lifted up through discipline or jellies to be molded, like Bertie Wooster, in order to be worthy of the feckless debutante he’s been browbeaten into pledging his life to.
Wow, totally unfair. My wife has not been a debutante for 20 years….
What a foolish article. Too bad you disd not take the time to study the times. Playboy opened a lot of doors for women in their Chicago office. And for many minority artists,comedians,writers. They were the ones who refused the cheap your not good enough ads that were common place in men’s magazines. Feminist/ I am male, so all the anti male out there and a supposed men’s forum is nothing but a surrender to the feminist POV and nothing for the male. You might as well say you are lookist because beauty is to be disregarded and male interests… Read more »
Hefner’s ‘contributions’ are way overstated. The first Black Playmate occurred AFTER the civil rights act. So. No real movement there. Nothing ‘breaking the rules’ or ‘bucking norms.’
Also, he did not free ‘women’ to be sexually liberated. He has done nothing for ‘women’ as a category but harm. The only people who think this… think that ‘woman’ means 18-25 year old, blonde, silicone breasted, slender, white young women. Not ‘women’ but an archetype. So, wrong on the women’s lib count too.
Sara you are wrong! I was there. The Buzz that a black woman was a playmate was big at the time and a very great risk. Look at all the women’s magazines the rarely have anyone non white on the cover, because they lose newsstand sales that is why. Black power is / was racist. It was a political attack of the fair skinned. You see at that time before computers many minorities disappeared into the White world not only ordinary people but actors too. Somehow they wanted a better life. One of the problem of not understanding what the… Read more »
OMG, will we STOP… STOP with the ‘bra-burning’ feminist meme. THAT NEVER HAPPENED. It has been debunked so many times it’s not even funny.
Draft cards were burned at the same time as 2nd wave feminism… someone thought it was funny to attribute the same ‘burning’ concept to something associated with women, ie. bras.
A feminist group protesting the Miss USA pageant had planned to burn bras in a steel trash can, but couldn’t do it because they didn’t have a fire permit.
No they didn’t. That has been debunked. There was no attempt to burn the bras.
http://www.snopes.com/history/american/burnbra.asp
So was it a moment of jocularity that brought forth the equally spurious notion that there were such things as ‘snuff films’? Because I remember feminists swearing to the veracity of that chestnut with the same fervor that some of my friends once testified to the legitimacy of Stalin’s show trials.
Hef is mild in comparison with the stuff out there now. I like the old geezer myself.
Yes, take a look at Silvio Berlusconi (The New Yorker, June 6 issue) or Muammar Kadafi.
I don’t see how anyone, based on the trailer, can come to the conclusion that this show’s intent is specifically to glorify Playboy and Hugh Hefner. Also, there is a clearly a scene that specifically references sexual harassment/assault as well as the racial dynamic at the time. Let’s just let the show air and develop before we try to make it the scapegoat for what’s wrong with gender issues in America. Of course the trailer will have sexual overtones because that’s what sells in America.
Again, let’s just let the show develop before begin campaigning for its cancellation.
I just have to say, I find these two adjacent sentences kind of funny:
“Let’s just let the show air and develop before we try to make it the scapegoat for what’s wrong with gender issues in America. Of course the trailer will have sexual overtones because that’s what sells in America.”
The show does sound stupid and (taken by itself) IS an example of backlash. Hefner’s behavior in the last few years has been pathetic, and clearly owes more to pornography than to sexual freedom ideals.. In fact, his personal behavior has usually seemed fairly grotesque. But I think it’s going too far to recast Playboy as pronography using “revisionist history.” The magazine was exciting, literated, and a welcome antidote to the wave of-reVictorianization we were enduring in the 50s. I quickly lost interest in the photographs, and began paying a lot of attention to the often-excellent articles and interviews. I… Read more »
Although I agree with Tom here on Hefner, especially how strongly the media views women through the eyes of a man due to Hefner’s influence, I think that there are two sides to the coin, as usual. Hefner’s contribution to free speech and women’s sexual rights should not be downplayed when reviewing his impact on American society (which is, honestly, still evolving itself). However, with regard to this new television series, I am with Tom. What would the world be like without the hyper-pornographic packaging of women? And to that matter, the packaging of women alone, as object images to… Read more »
I think that a lot the main fans of Mad Men actually *do* get that the show is not espousing workplace harassment but it is rather depicting the reality of the times. Mad Men is one of the few shows, or maybe only show, on tv which has an exclusively female writing staff. The nuance in which they deal with gender issues is subtle and amazingly intricate. If you follow the show you can see that Peggy Olson is Don Draper’s figurative mirror image. Their relationship is very complex and though they are not often seen together alone on camera,… Read more »
Hefner didn’t do a damn thing for women’s sexual rights. He highjacked the sexual revolution and made it all about commodifying women’s bodies.
Without some sort of porn, it’s likely that the idea of sex as its own justification would be the exclusive province of bohemians and rebels, faux and sincere. That would suit a lot of religious puritans and, sadly, more than a few feminists. Not that this means anyone should thank Hugh Hefner.
The best way to understand NBC’s decision to me? Look at their ratings. They are playing to the lowest common denominator, trying to push the envelope and using the greatest sales support there is: SEX. Could the show be any good? Who knows. It could if it actually explores the nuances and the varying contexts in which women find themselves as a result of Playboy – there have been pros and cons, to be sure. Until our society really begins to address the incredibly schizophrenic way we approach sex these shows will not have a dramatic effect either way. The… Read more »
I dunno. I used to get Playboy and found myself reading the articles after a few issues. Good writing.