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I never had sex with a real woman until Hugh Hefner introduced me to one. She was beautiful. I had wondered what a naked woman looked like. Hugh Hefner showed me. I had wondered what lay between a woman’s legs. Hugh wasn’t so clear about that. He was clear about the power that stood between mine.
Hugh didn’t introduce me to one beautiful woman. He introduced me to hundreds. He told me about their interests. That was nice, but I wasn’t really interested. It wasn’t the parts of their biographies that got my attention, it was the parts of their bodies.
Mr. Hefner’s magazine helped me know myself better. Did I prefer redheads or blondes? Was I an ass man, or something else. Playboy magazine was my guide.
A friend told me that the women I kept falling in love with weren’t all that they appeared to be. The Centerfolds were doctored to eliminate blemishes and scars. I didn’t care. I wanted to be that doctor.
My father was a good man. He didn’t have much to say about women. He treated my mother and sister with great respect. He supported them in being who they wanted to be. That was about it. How to respect my mother and my sister, I wanted to figure out on my own. How to learn how to have sex with beautiful women was what I needed help with. In my house, there was no talk about that. I read, in the Playboy Mansion that was the main topic of not just conversation, but of action too.
My relationship with Playboy didn’t lead to any action for me. It was a substitute for the real thing. I heard tell real women had warts and scars and pimples and blemish and birthmarks. I heard you couldn’t tell much about real women by reading the curves of their bodies or the color of their pubic hair. Real women apparently had interests and wanted to share them. Yuk, Yuk and Yuk. Whatever.
I got more than just some make-believe action from Playboy. I got a whole harem and I couldn’t get enough. Now, don’t get me wrong. These women weren’t easy. I had to deal with embarrassment every time I purchased a copy of Playboy magazine. I never outgrew this. I had to find hiding places that my parents would never think of looking. I knew they would never look under my mattress. Well, I sort of did, but it was a convenient spot for my library and I didn’t like thinking about who might know about it much.
Next to death, I feared to have someone happening by when I was reading my latest issue of Playboy magazine or a favorite past issue and they were all my favorite. Coming to remember it clearly I think actually death came in a close second. When it came to doing it even though I was afraid, I was a manly hero.
At first, I thought it was just me. I thought others laughed at the great cartoons, read the in-depth interviews, enjoyed the product and movie reviews, while I was pissed that all of that filler just made the magazine more difficult to hide.
I matured thank goodness. I developed a deep appreciation for all that Playboy had to offer besides photographic excellence. I developed a deeper appreciation for the way the light was used to capture my favorite still life images. I often thought that I didn’t need to look at the photography. I even thought that the man I was becoming didn’t even want to. The man I was, usually decided since I had paid good money for the magazine, I might as well get my money’s worth by looking at all of the pages. It would often then occur to me that I knew how to get full value out of the product and all it took was a little space for uninterrupted silent reflection and unzipping my pants. Getting full value usually left me with a sense of relaxed ease, but deeper down a sense of unease.
Hugh Hefner brought me Presidential Jimmy Carter’s confession that he sometimes had “lust in his heart” for women he did not love. I laughed and thought “so what, don’t all men?” President Carter thought most men do, but when he did, it was a big problem. This successful peanut farmer, wouldn’t have much of a chance of getting elected today for many reasons. Thinking like he said he did in the Playboy interview is but one of the reasons why not. That interview did leave a lasting impression on me though.
Hugh Hefner introduced me to human sexual research scientists Masters and Johnson. Masters and Johnson told me that women don’t respond to sexual stimulation the way that men do. They don’t express their sexuality the same way either. How they express their sexuality is often heavily influenced by a culture of men telling women what they want and what she should want. Many women today are getting what they want and men are enjoying giving it, in a round about way, thanks to the late great Hugh Hefner.
What made Hefner great, is what makes many men and women great, the courage to take calculated risks. Hefner had a nice brand going for himself. It was a brand that made men feel more comfortable ogling women. Nowadays that is done by Googling “Women.” Any man can Google up any kind of woman willing to do any kind of thing, no matter how degrading that may be to the woman. Men can tell themselves that they Google it, so they won’t feel the desire to really do it. Others Google it to find a real person to get nasty with.
Throughout history, women have found themselves in difficult economic situations. They have found how much of themselves are they willing to sell in order to survive. The internet’s most profitable product is female bodies. From huge college loans and other traps, women have an easier way to get out of debt with easier access to the sex trade. Women can be advised the sale of their services under their control, can quickly turn to losing control. Women increasingly find themselves unable to do so and believing the lie that it is all their fault.
There has never been more technology that can be more destructive of the capacity for men and women allowing their sexuality to take them to sacred places.
Hefner was the master of the click and switch bait. Men used to come to Playboy for one thing. They found that and then found something more.
If you want to ask older men an interesting question, ask if seeing their first Playboy magazine, was a time when they were astonished as to how good it was to born male. Ask them how Playboy mislead them and how it lead them.
I don’t like to remember Hef as a 90-year-old man in his pajamas sitting next to women with high cheekbones much younger than half his age. Most men who have worked for a living and are 90 yeas old, wish they could spend less time in their P.J’s. For Hefner, pajamas were the clothes that made the man.
I don’t want to remember Hef as a playboy who personified making a big profit from viewing women as objects and then using that profit to use women for his pleasure. I don’t want to remember him as a guy who made men, who never could find their way into a real playboy mansion of their own, feel less than. I don’t want to remember him as being responsible for girls looking at their bodies and crying. He did play a big part in eating disorders and plastic surgeries. I don’t want to thing about that right now.
I would like to remember Hugh Hefner as a man who lured men in with his cute little bunny-eared brand, then told them to get real.
Now is a time when judging the merits of celebrities in black and white terms is very popular. Feel free to play that game with Hugh Hefner and please excuse me if I don’t.
The goodmenproject.com website features some images that encourage men to take the bait. I don’t get to pick what image will go with this post, but if the image chosen, was the primary reason you clicked here, good. Maybe next time you will click on an article posted on goodmenproject.com for its title.
I wrote the above article for the Good Men Project in October 2016. It was not accepted then mainly due to the technicality that Hugh Hefner was still very much alive.
I make no claim to have been in another reality when I wrote what I wrote. I do not believe I have been Mandela Effected in this regard. (In many, many other regards yes, but not in this one). I must admit that I fell for a single, click bait headline that he was dead. If only I would have clicked there then.
I am submitting this article on September 28, 2017, based on my new understanding that Mr. Hefner died yesterday. My opinions of the man have changed since I first thought he was dead. My opinion of me has too. As for his most popular viewpoints, it would have been better if Hefner had never been born. Of myself, I am grateful that my opinions of things are still mutable.
All things sexual should not be separate things, but the exclusive property of deeply compassionate, committed, intimate loving human relationships. Mr. Hugh Hefner exploited sex for profit, by appealing to both the intellectual elite and the common man.
I am no longer a Playboy apologist. I grew up.
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Photo: Pixabay