HUGH Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine, left a legacy to popular culture that is immense and influential, but like many human innovations it also had a profoundly dark aspect.
Hefner died on Sept. 27 at the age of 91 in his ritzy Los Angeles home, the Playboy Mansion.
In 1953, he launched Playboy magazine with $8,000 in money funded by 45 investors, including his mother who contributed $1,000 because “she believed in her boy.” That first issue carried a nude study of Marilyn Monroe.
Although there were other nudie magazines on the market at the time, it was Playboy that became the most popular, reaching its Golden Age in the 1970s.
The rise of the brand would make an excellent marketing case study. Playboy positioned itself as “clean” and “wholesome” as smut could be, with the naked models posed against barns, cars, and other such symbols of Americana. Most of the models were healthy and curvy, none were unduly made-up, the photography was tasteful and not as explicit as that in the pages of rivals Penthouse and Hustler.
Playboy commercialized sex and pornography, and legitimized them as reading material. It was readily available at newsstands. The brand extended itself into other goods and services for men including apparel and accessories, the magazine’s bunny mascot appearing on wallets, cigarette cases and the like.
One such successful branded venture was the Playboy Club, which in its heyday operated in various locations from 1960 to 1988. Its waitresses, called Playboy Bunnies, were dressed in bunny suits—bunny ears, a pompom tail on a corset teddy, bowtie, collar, cuffs, and black pantyhose. Bunnies were not the centerfold models—those were called Playmates.
It was the magazine that people claimed “they read for the articles,” and in truth many groundbreaking pieces were published by Playboy. One was an interview by “Roots” author Alex Haley of American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell, and it was a spectacular coup for its day, because Haley was black.
Rockwell, though surprised at the choice of interviewer, only made sure that Haley was not Jewish before speaking to him. The “Playboy interview” became a standard feature of the magazine. Hunter S. Thompson also wrote investigative pieces for Playboy.
The magazine was also famous for publishing science fiction stories by notable authors, among them the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, which was serialized in the March, April, and May 1954 issues. Under Fiction Editor Robie Macauley from 1966 to 1976 the magazine published stories by such heavyweights as Saul Bellow, John Updike, Doris Lessing, Joyce Carol Oates, Vladimir Nabokov, and Kurt Vonnegut.
For all its innovations that changed media and publishing, for all that it helped launch the sexual revolution that changed how people in society engage in sex and perceive sexual behaviors, Playboy had a dark side.
It objectified women as commodities for the delectation of men. It was demeaning towards women. At the Playboy Mansion, Hefner encouraged competition among the models and fostered body-image issues. At the Playboy Clubs, Bunnies were weighed in before being sewn into their teddies and a weight gain of over one pound (allowance for water retention) would lead to penalties.
Still, during its time, it was a cultural force to be contended with. For many Filipinos who were children and young teens in the ‘70s and ‘80s, their sexual awakening was courtesy of their father’s Playboy magazines stashed in a dark corner of the closet.
The magazines were shared and ogled over, and carefully returned to their hiding place before the owner came home. Playboy had a certain prestige, a cachet that trying-hard Penthouse, which was raunchier, did not possess.
For girls, the magazine was an introduction to a burgeoning femaleness that was aspirational, but could not be successfully emulated because the Playmates were mostly white, corn-fed blonde beauties whose huge breasts and behinds were the opposite of the Asian body-type and complexion.
But along with the insecurity of body image, fostered in part by colonial mentality, Playboy in those early years exposed Filipinas to the idea of sexual freedom, that it was to be explored and experimented with. Sex in the pages of Playboy was normalized, and this was a radical concept for girls educated in strict convent schools.
For good or ill, Playboy left its mark on several generations who were influenced one way or another by Hugh Hefner’s vision and concepts of sex and sexuality.
Dr. Ortuoste is a California-based writer. Follow her on Facebook: Jenny Ortuoste, Twitter: @jennyortuoste, Instagram: @jensdecember, @artuoste
