tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/playboy-magazine-36114/articlesPlayboy magazine – The Conversation2023-10-24T11:26:32Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2157342023-10-24T11:26:32Z2023-10-24T11:26:32ZHow the Playboy bunny suit went from uniform to Halloween costume<p>In the 2004 film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377092/">Mean Girls</a>, Cady (Lindsay Lohan) is invited to a Halloween party. Previously homeschooled, Cady dresses as a zombie bride, but is shocked to find her peers wearing much more suggestive costumes. “In girl world”, Cady muses, “Halloween is the one time a year when a girl can dress like a total slut, and no other girls can say anything about it.”</p>
<p>One of those girls, Regina George (Rachel McAdams), is wearing one of the most culturally significant costumes of the last decade: the Playboy bunny suit.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Halloween scene from Mean Girls.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Originally designed in 1960 as a uniform for female workers of the Playboy clubs, the Playboy bunny suit was the first service uniform <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=j5I62jQSEAIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+bunny+years&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=patent&f=false">to be patented</a> in the US. Yet despite this, the costume has been replicated and sold by <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/playboy-fashion-nova-bunny-costume-lawsuit/">numerous fashion retailers</a> (sometimes attracting legal action by Playboy), becoming one of the most prevalent fancy dress and Halloween costumes. </p>
<p>Every October the <a href="https://www.playboy.com/read/the-authentic-bunny-suit">instantly recognisable Playboy bunny suit</a> – with its corseted bodysuit, ears, tail, cuffs, collar, bow tie, and name-tag rosette on the hip – is the costume of choice for <a href="https://www.insider.com/keanu-reeves-red-table-talk-matrix-halloween-playboy-bunny-2021-12">celebrities</a> such as <a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/latest/a29621841/kylie-jenner-playboy-bunny-outfit-halloween-2019/">Kylie Jenner</a> and <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8891961/Paris-Hilton-transforms-ideal-Playboy-Bunny-models-Halloween-costumes-Instagram.html">Paris Hilton</a>, and normies alike. </p>
<h2>The history of the Playboy bunny suit</h2>
<p>The bunny suit’s origin has been subject to much misinformation. It has been falsely reported that the suit was designed by <a href="https://nypost.com/2017/09/28/she-designed-the-famous-playboy-bunny-costume/">Zelda Wynn Valdes</a>, known for her <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/obituaries/zelda-wynn-valdes-overlooked.html">figure-hugging designs</a> for clients such as Ella Fitzgerald and Josephine Baker.</p>
<p>Though the story that it was created by an under-recognised black designer is compelling, the truth is that many different hands went into the creation of the suit. </p>
<p><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/zelda-wynn-valdes-an-interview-with-nancy-deihl/id1350850605?i=1000510307173">While Wynn Valdes did create</a> bunny suits for the New York Playboy Club, the original concept came from <a href="https://fidmmuseum.org/2017/09/a-colony-of-colors-the-iconic-playboy-bunny.html">Ilsa Taurins</a>, the girlfriend of a former Playboy promotions director. Her mother sewed the first prototype. </p>
<p>Since its debut in 1960, the bunny suit has been seen in numerous colours and patterns – <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/chocolate-playboy-bunny-costume_n_58eb9f22e4b0ca64d917d2cf">even once made entirely of chocolate</a> – but the design has remained largely unchanged.</p>
<p>In 1963, journalist and activist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gloria-Steinem">Gloria Steinem</a> spent two weeks working undercover as a bunny in the New York Playboy Club researching her two part exposé, <a href="https://sociologyinfocus.com/files/pdf/show-a%20bunny_s%20tale-part%20two-june%201963.pdf">A Bunny’s Tale</a>. </p>
<p>Steinem critiqued Playboy’s treatment of bunnies, drawing attention to the discomfort of long shifts wearing the costume, violating examinations by a Playboy-affiliated doctor and the egregious merit/demerit system <a href="https://archive.org/details/1969-bunnymanual">laid out in the employee manual</a>. </p>
<p>Bunnies could receive demerits for a long list of perceived errors, including unkempt hair, chewing gum or incorrectly bent bunny ears.</p>
<p>But not everyone agreed. Kathryn Leigh Scott, author of <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/The-Bunny-Years/Kathryn-Leigh-Scott/9781451663280">The Bunny Years</a> (1998), worked alongside Steinem during her undercover stint. She claims that the reality of working as a bunny was more nuanced than Steinem portrayed. According to Scott, the club provided an opportunity to travel and earn a decent wage in a time where there were less opportunities for women in the workforce. </p>
<p>The last of the original US Playboy clubs <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/15/us/last-of-playboy-clubs-in-us-to-shut-down.html">closed in 1988</a> and attempts to reopen them in <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna47679946">Las Vegas</a> and <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/11/14/nyc-playboy-club-bunnies-to-hang-up-tails-and-ears-after-just-one-year/">New York</a> have been short-lived, but the bunny remains a contentious subject of feminist debate. </p>
<p>In the recent docuseries <a href="https://www.channel4.com/programmes/secrets-of-playboy">Secrets of Playboy</a> (2022), former bunnies came forward with accounts of sexual harassment and assault in Playboy clubs. However, many women who have worn the costume <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BhmxX1bnre4/?hl=en">both for work</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/CRkGwC3pd84/?hl=en">leisure</a> have also claimed that they find the Playboy bunny suit <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/22/the-playboy-bunny-empowered">sexually empowering</a>. </p>
<h2>The rise of the ‘sexy’ Halloween costume</h2>
<p>The rise in popularity of the Playboy bunny as a Halloween outfit can be linked to the increase in popularity of the “sexy” Halloween costume. In the US, modern adult Halloween costumes entered the cultural zietgeist in the 1970s. Writing for <a href="https://time.com/3547024/sexy-halloween-costumes-history/">Time magazine</a>, journalist Laura Stampler credits this to LGBTQ+ Halloween parades, which encouraged outlandish and creative costumes.</p>
<p>By the 1990s and 2000s, Halloween costumes reflected the the rise of <a href="https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/2449/1/Postfeminist_media_culture_(LSERO).pdf">postfeminist</a>, overtly sexualised media representations of women. Sexy costumes began to dominate Halloween parties, offering a campy reflection of pop culture. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Playboy bunny suit in Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001).</span></figcaption>
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<p>Despite changing times, browse any website selling Halloween costumes and variations of the Playboy bunny costume still pop up. This continuing popularity could partly be due to Playboy’s lasting cultural impact (the brand turned 70 this year). Or it could be due to a perceived distinction between the iconic “bunnies” and the Playboy brand. </p>
<p>The costume’s appearance in media from anime such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbYsz3hOeAw&app=desktop">Dragon Ball</a>, to films such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIGz4I56Lc8">Legally Blonde</a> and Bridget Jones’s Diary has led to the Playboy bunny becoming a pop culture icon in her own right.</p>
<h2>Embodying the Playboy bunny</h2>
<p>Call me a bad feminist, but I love the Playboy bunny costume. In November 2017, while studying for my MFA in Chicago at an institution that was once <a href="https://fnewsmagazine.com/2017/11/hef-this-the-complicated-history-of-saics-connection-to-hugh-hefner/">gifted the original Playboy Mansion</a>, I flew to New York to attend a bunny casting.</p>
<p>Unlike Steinem, my attempt to go undercover proved fruitless. On reflection, I wanted to go through the Playboy bunny casting process because I wanted to know what it felt like to wear the suit.</p>
<p>In 2021, my friend Amber Sylvia and I set out to create the bunny suit of my dreams. Embellished with over 10,000 rhinestones, my suit celebrates the countless women of Playboy, who continue to inspire both my research and art practices. </p>
<p>Dressed as a Playboy bunny, I realised why – over 60 years on – it continues to be a popular costume choice. I became an exaggerated version of myself. The ears and heels made me stand taller while the corseting exaggerated my feminine features.</p>
<p>Regina George made a smart Halloween costume choice. For me, the Playboy bunny represents feminine sexuality in its most playful and heightened form. And considering its history – originally crafted for the enjoyment of male Playboy club patrons – it’s a little spooky, too.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daisy McManaman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Playboy bunny represents feminine sexuality in its most playful and heightened form.Daisy McManaman, PhD Candidate, Centre for Women's Studies, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2056152023-05-16T16:36:24Z2023-05-16T16:36:24ZAnna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me – Netflix doc seeks to reclaim model’s legacy, despite problematic contributors<p>Who was Anna Nicole Smith? In a <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/81380540">new Netflix documentary</a>, Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me, director Ursula Macfarlane weaves a tragic web from complex, at times conflicting, accounts of the life of the infamous model.</p>
<p>You Don’t Know Me documents the unravelling of Smith’s public image, from small-town girl, to Playboy playmate and Guess model, to “gold digger” and “<a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2007/02/anna_nicole_and_new_york_a_nol_1.html">white trash</a>”. From reality television star to American tragedy.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Netflix’s Anna Nicole Smith documentary.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Born Vickie Lynn Hogan, Smith spent most of her childhood in the small Texan town of Mexia. Moving to Houston aged 19 to seek a better life to support her young son, Daniel, Smith worked as a stripper, eventually saving up enough money to afford a breast augmentation.</p>
<p>This surgery helped to secure her stardom as she crafted an image for herself as a larger-than-life vision of hyper femininity. But it also helped seal her fate.</p>
<p><a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/cameras-off-anna-nicole-smith-vicki-lynn-friends/story?id=75642872">Back pain from her breast augmentation</a> led Smith to <a href="https://starcasm.net/anna-nicole-smith-took-drugs-for-brain-seizures-and-back-pain-caused-by-her-breast-implants/">abuse prescription drugs</a> for the rest of her life.</p>
<p>In 1991, while stripping in Houston, <a href="https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/obvious-history-anna-nicole-smith-ended-marrying-89-year-old">Smith met billionaire Texan oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall</a>, who was 63 years her senior. </p>
<p>In return for her company, Marshall looked after Smith and her son financially. Though Smith was frequently dubbed a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469660301_donovan">gold-digger</a> in the media coverage of the couple, in You Don’t Know Me, the relationship is depicted as genuinely caring. </p>
<p>Smith refused to marry Marshall until she had made a name for herself. True to her word, she made herself a star and <a href="https://people.com/human-interest/from-the-archives-anna-nicole-smith-weds-j-howard-marshall-ii-1994/">married him three years later</a>, at Houston’s White Dove Wedding Chapel.</p>
<h2>Smith’s star power</h2>
<p>As with another notorious blonde bombshell of her generation, <a href="https://theconversation.com/netflixs-pamela-a-love-story-overturns-stereotypes-about-victims-of-intimate-partner-abuse-198022">Pamela Anderson</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-playboy-cut-ties-with-hugh-hefner-to-create-a-post-metoo-brand-202223">Playboy magazine</a> was the catalyst for Smith’s rise to fame. First featured on its cover in <a href="https://www.librarything.com/work/20657545">March 1992</a>, Smith was quickly made <a href="https://www.tias.com/playboy-magazine-may-1992-vickie-smith-833646.html">playmate of the month</a> in May, before winning <a href="https://pagesix.com/1999/11/30/anna-nicole-smith/#2">playmate of the year</a> in 1993. </p>
<p>Smith became one of Playboy’s most prolific models. She appeared on <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/most-famous-playboy-cover-models-2012-9?r=US&IR=T#47-covers-1993-anna-nicole-smith-has-appeared-on-the-cover-47-times-in-20-countries-including-five-times-in-the-us-the-1993-playmate-of-the-years-american-cover-shots-range-from-1992-to-2007-with-the-last-one-being-released-a-few-months-after-her-death-after-the-release-of-her-first-playboy-picture-guess-jeans-signed-her-on-the-spot-as-a-model-24">five US and 42 international Playboy covers, across 19 countries</a>.</p>
<p>Playboy led to other modelling jobs, most notoriously <a href="https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/39195459249738788/">for fashion brand Guess</a>. Smith’s goddess-like figure, splashed across H&M lingerie billboards, even reportedly caused a <a href="https://tinyurl.com/4ctr47vr">number of car accidents in Norway</a>.</p>
<p>Smith’s life was also couched with tragedy. The documentary charts a <a href="https://nymag.com/news/features/anna-nicole-smith-2011-6/">lengthy and fruitless series of court cases</a> over her deceased husband’s fortune, her brutal and misogynistic treatment in the media and both <a href="https://people.com/celebrity/anna-nicoles-son-dies-daughter-is-born/">her son’s fatal overdose</a> in 2006 and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/08/arts/08cnd-smith.html">her own</a> the following year, aged just 39. </p>
<p>At times the coverage of the tragedy of Smith’s life in You Don’t Know Me, eclipses that of her accomplishments.</p>
<h2>‘Adored by millions, but loved by few’</h2>
<p>It’s hard to get a true sense of Smith’s life and character. Her reputation has been largely shaped by a misogynistic media culture. Celebrity women are frequently criticised in the British and American press, particularly those who dare to exist outside the western norms of feminine acceptability and desirability.</p>
<p>In one particularly striking clip, American radio presenter Howard Stern <a href="https://www.yourtango.com/entertainment/howard-stern-demands-anna-nicole-smith-weigh-herself-live-radio">asks Smith to be publicly weighed</a>, for the entertainment of his viewers. </p>
<p>In recent years there has been a rise in <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22350286/2000s-pop-culture-misogyny-britney-spears-janet-jackson-whitney-houston-monica-lewinsky">re-evaluations</a> of the treatment of female celebrities in the 1990s and 2000s. Singer <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/81177110">Britney Spears</a> and socialite <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOg0TY1jG3w">Paris Hilton</a> have both had documentaries made about their lives (though Spears denounced some of those made about her <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2021/09/britney-spears-speaks-out-against-new-documentaries.html">her via her Instagram</a>.</p>
<p>Netflix has released a spate of projects on the lives of notorious blonde bombshells. In 2022, there was the controversial Marilyn Monroe biopic, Blonde, which many fans of Monroe saw <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/28/movies/blonde-review-marilyn-monroe.html">as exploiting and victimising Monroe</a>, a charge <a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/director-andrew-dominik-blames-blonde-backlash-on-audiences-wanting-to-reinvent-marilyn-monroe-as-an-empowered-woman-205420125.html#:%7E:text=Andrew%20Dominik%2C%20the%20director%20of,backlash%20against%20the%20Netflix%20film.">the director denied</a>.</p>
<p>In 2023, a documentary in which model Pamela Anderson <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23585077/pamela-a-love-story-netflix-anderson-documentary">reclaimed her own narrative</a> followed Hulu’s release of Pam and Tommy. The drama series, which told the story of the actor’s leaked sex tape, was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/feb/15/pam-and-tommy-hulu-series-pamela-anderson-consent">created without her consent</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-watch-pam-and-tommy-the-series-turns-someones-trauma-into-entertainment-176844">Don't watch Pam and Tommy – the series turns someone's trauma into entertainment</a>
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<p>These projects sometimes feel uncomfortable. It’s questionable how ethical it is to retell the story of women whose lives have already been damaged by media depictions of them. Instead of redeeming their subjects, these projects often cause further harm by perpetuating a sense of public ownership over them.</p>
<h2>Who gets to tell Smith’s story?</h2>
<p>While Macfarlane successfully calls attention to how unfairly the media treated Smith, it’s troubling how the documentary treats Smith’s lawyer, Howard K. Stern with neutrality. </p>
<p>Stern was accused of being <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/anna-nicole-judge-reopen-murder-case-blame-stern-18631/">complicit in the drug abuse</a> that led to her death. He was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/13/anna-nicole-smiths-boyfriend-charged">found guilty</a> of illegally providing Smith with prescription drugs in 2009, before having <a href="https://nypost.com/2011/01/06/judge-dismisses-conviction-of-howard-k-stern/">his conviction overturned in 2011</a>. </p>
<p>Her doctor, Sandeep Kapoor, who was <a href="https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/entertainment/dr-sandeep-kapoor-not-guilty-in-anna-nicole-smith-trial-but-howard-k-stern-convicted/news-story/42f3c2c312905bac5d843f395a8826ee">acquitted</a> of over-prescribing drugs to Smith in 2010, is also featured in the documentary, describing how he pulled strings to provide a heavily pregnant Smith with methadone in the Bahamas.</p>
<p>In his 2017 memoir, Trust Me, I’m A Doctor: My Life Before, During and After Anna Nicole Smith, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/anna-nicole-smiths-former-doctor-claims-playmate-misused-drugs-but-wasnt-an-addict">Kapoor claimed</a> that while he knew Smith misused drugs, he wasn’t aware of her addiction.</p>
<p>Smith’s ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead and their 16-year-old daughter Dannielynn Birkhead refused to take part in the documentary, saying that they withdrew over disagreements with <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/04/19/anna-nicole-smiths-ex-and-daughter-refuse-to-appear-in-netflix-doc/">production over who would or would not be its participants</a>. Birkhead claims to be working on his own documentary of Smith’s life, utilising her archives to <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/04/19/anna-nicole-smiths-ex-and-daughter-refuse-to-appear-in-netflix-doc/">“let Anna tell her own story”</a>. </p>
<p>You Don’t Know Me presents the pieces of a complicated legacy. Though the cultural fascination surrounding Smith means audiences are eager to learn about the “real her”, she is (unlike Spears, Hilton and Anderson) no longer alive to tell her own story – or refute those told about her.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205615/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daisy McManaman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s questionable how ethical it is to retell the story of women whose lives have already been damaged by media depictions of them.Daisy McManaman, PhD Candidate, Centre for Women's Studies, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2022232023-04-05T15:14:18Z2023-04-05T15:14:18ZHow Playboy cut ties with Hugh Hefner to create a post-#MeToo brand<p>Hugh Hefner launched Playboy Magazine 70 years ago this year. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/28/business/media/playboy-hugh-hefner.html">The first issue</a> included a nude photograph of Marilyn Monroe, which he had purchased and published <a href="https://www.biography.com/actors/marilyn-monroe-playboy-first-issue-didnt-pose">without her knowledge or consent</a>. </p>
<p>Hefner went on to build the Playboy brand off the backs of the countless women featured in its pages, whose beauty and performance of heightened feminine sexuality have entertained its readers for generations.</p>
<p>Approaching its 70th anniversary in December, Playboy has radically shifted. With the magazine <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2020/03/playboy-closes-print-magazine.html">no longer in publication</a>, the <a href="https://people.com/home/playboy-mansion-sold-for-100-million/">Playboy Mansion sold</a> to a developer and London’s last remaining Playboy Club <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Ce6V6ZXNnST/">closing in 2021</a>, what is the future for Playboy? The brand is changing to keep up with the post-#MeToo world.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/hugh-hefner-playboy-and-being-a-man-during-the-cold-war-84841">Hefner passed away</a> one month before allegations against film producer <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-41594672">Harvey Weinstein</a> surfaced in 2017 giving momentum to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/metoo-a-year-on-media-troll-women-when-journalists-should-be-tackling-causes-of-sexual-abuse-104804">#MeToo movement</a> (which saw survivors of sexual assault and harassment speak out against their abusers). </p>
<p>In recent years, many have <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjvyvw/dont-mourn-for-hugh-hefner">re-evaluated Hefner’s legacy</a> and relationships with women. The 2022 docuseries <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuWdBMon3EU">The Secrets of Playboy</a> (which aired on Channel 4 in the UK) detailed sexual misconduct accusations against Hefner from several ex-girlfriends, including model Sondra Theodore and TV personality Holly Madison.</p>
<p>Hefner and Playboy’s relationship with women has been complicated. Playboy was <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2017/09/hugh-hefner-playboy-magazine-abortion-rights.html">an early supporter of abortion rights</a>, helped <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/17/opinion/rape-kit-history.html">fund the first rape kit</a> and was at times an <a href="https://zora.medium.com/what-happened-to-playboys-first-black-cover-girl-25f48b985edb">early proponent of inclusivity</a> (for example featuring transgender model, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/tula-transgender-playboy-model_n_7638670">Caroline “Tula” Cossey</a>, in its June 1981 issue). But most women featured in Playboy have fit within <a href="https://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/archive/images/article/magazine/1702/WIRED_1702_Infoporn.pdf">a narrow beauty standard</a> – thin, white, able bodied and blonde.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Hefner’s personal relationship with his much younger girlfriends reportedly <a href="https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/holly-madison-hugh-hefner-drugs-tried-buy-me-will-2015106/">followed patterns</a> of control and emotional abuse. Ex-girlfriend Holly Madison described Hefner as treating her “like a glorified pet” in her memoir, Down the Rabbit Hole (2015).</p>
<p>Hefner’s passing meant he evaded reckoning with the #MeToo movement. Playboy, however, responded, <a href="https://medium.com/@playboy/an-open-letter-to-our-team-community-9e3f1a68b0aa">releasing a statement</a> in which it affirmed support for the women featured in The Secrets of Playboy and called Hefner’s actions “abhorrent”. </p>
<p>The statement declared that the brand was no longer affiliated with the Hefner family and would be focusing on aspects of the company’s legacy that align with values of sex positivity and free expression.</p>
<p>Today, Playboy is a very different company from the one Hefner launched nearly 70 years ago. Roughly <a href="https://medium.com/@playboy/an-open-letter-to-our-team-community-9e3f1a68b0aa">80% of Playboy staff identify as women</a>, according the company and its motto has changed from “Entertainment for Men” to “Pleasure for All”. Shares in the company are publicly traded and 40% of its board and management <a href="https://www.plbygroup.com/leadership">are women</a>.</p>
<p>The company has also moved towards more creator-led content through its app, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshwilson/2021/10/18/playboy-pushes-forward-the-release-of-its-platform-centerfold-to-rival-onlyfans/?sh=fef7ca338cd1">Playboy Centerfold</a>. Similar to subscription content service <a href="https://theconversation.com/onlyfans-has-a-split-identity-it-needs-to-declare-its-support-for-adult-content-creators-169358">OnlyFans</a>, Playboy Centerfold allows subscribers to view content from and interact with its creators, which it call “bunnies”.</p>
<p>On the app, creators – or bunnies – are able portray their own bodies however they wish, putting the power back in their hands. Perhaps Playboy’s future is no longer in serving the male gaze, but instead the very audience Hefner dismissed in <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34471653">his first letter from the editor</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you’re a man between the ages of 18 and 80 Playboy is meant for you … If you’re somebody’s sister, wife or mother-in-law and picked us up by mistake, please pass us along to the man in your life and get back to your Ladies Home Companion.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The bunnies next door</h2>
<p>The stars of Playboy’s mid-2000s reality series, Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt, are also enjoying a resurgence among fans.</p>
<p>The Girls Next Door launched in 2004. The show focused on the lives of Hefner’s three girlfriends, Madison, Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson. It became E’s best <a href="https://www.nexttv.com/news/ratings-girls-next-door-delivers-e-34269">performing</a> show and cultivated a new <a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/09/the-e-reality-show-the-girls-next-door-was-the-best-thing-hugh-hefner-ever-gave-us.html">female audience</a> for Playboy.</p>
<p>The Girls Next Door was a story of complicated empowerment despite patriarchal interference. Its three female protagonists went from being known solely as some of Hefner’s many blonde girlfriends, to celebrities in their own right. </p>
<p>They each ultimately broke up with Hefner, leaving the Mansion and going on to lead successful careers.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Bridget Marquardt and Hugh Hefner with Holly Madison and Kendra Wilkinson wear glamorous clothing on a red carpet photoshoot." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516480/original/file-20230320-3036-r24sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516480/original/file-20230320-3036-r24sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516480/original/file-20230320-3036-r24sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516480/original/file-20230320-3036-r24sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516480/original/file-20230320-3036-r24sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516480/original/file-20230320-3036-r24sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516480/original/file-20230320-3036-r24sy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bridget Marquardt and Hugh Hefner with Holly Madison and Kendra Wilkinson in 2008.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bridget-marquardt-hugh-hefner-holly-madison-108016850">s_bukley/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The show’s depiction of Madison, Marquardt and Wilkinson as empowered, fun-loving and complex individuals, who found joy and agency through expressing their sexuality was perhaps what drew <a href="https://nypost.com/2007/08/06/why-women-love-girls-next-door/">so many female fans to the show</a>. However, amid the girls’ fight for agency, Hefner retaliated. </p>
<p>The series shows that he maintained final say in every Playboy photograph of the girls, as well as imposing <a href="https://screenshot-media.com/culture/toxic-masculinity/playboy-bunny-reality/">strict curfews</a> and spending allowances.</p>
<p>In Madison and Wilkinson’s memoirs, Down the Rabbit Hole (2015) and Sliding into Home (2010), they claim that production consistently undermined them. They refused to pay them for the first season, didn’t credit them until season four and <a href="https://thoughtcatalog.com/christine-stockton/2015/06/holly-spills-delicious-playboy-secrets/">aired their uncensored nude bodies</a> in foreign broadcasts and DVD releases without consent.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-3JoBrKerlE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Holly Madison, one of the Girls Next Door cast, on life at the Mansion.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fan interest in The Girls Next Door remains strong. In August 2022 Madison and Marquardt launched their podcast <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/playboy-playmates-rewatching-girls-next-door-for-girls-next-level-podcast-is-high-art?ref=scroll">Girls Next Level</a>, where they interview previous playmates and interact with fans. They also recap episodes from their own points of view, unpacking their experiences of working on the show. </p>
<p>Having reached <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CoOItP0PeEV/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=">10 million downloads</a> as of February 2023, the success of the podcast – 14 years after the last episode of The Girls Next Door – speaks to the cultural legacy of the Playboy brand. It also shows that despite Hefner’s original editor’s note, Playboy resonates with some women.</p>
<p>Playboy is now in a post-Hefner era, where the imagery of women found within old issues of Playboy can serve as inspiration for others to enjoy their own sexuality. Whatever the future has for the company, the concept of Playboy has become public property – be that in the appearance of <a href="https://jezebel.com/playboy-bunny-halloween-costume-1849683128">Playboy bunny costumes</a> each Halloween, the popularity of cheeky Playboy logo tattoos or branded lingerie and clothing.</p>
<p>In a post-#MeToo era, the women of Playboy are speaking up and taking over. With the mansion gates closed, the bunnies are finally reclaiming the brand as their own.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202223/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daisy McManaman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As Playboy approaches its 70th anniversary, an expert in the brand asks – is there a place for Playboy in the post #MeToo world?Daisy McManaman, PhD Candidate, Centre for Women's Studies, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/918882018-02-20T11:40:47Z2018-02-20T11:40:47ZParents need to start talking to their tweens about the risks of porn<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207015/original/file-20180219-116360-1kr0vfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=38%2C273%2C1455%2C931&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Most parents are unaware just how easily available 'hardcore' porn has become.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chepko Danil Vitalevich/Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: This article includes references to graphic sexual content that may be inappropriate for some readers.</em></p>
<p>Today teenagers are viewing far more pornography than their parents realize. And the porn they’re watching is much more “hardcore” than moms and dads could possibly imagine. </p>
<p>These were the main messages of “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/magazine/teenagers-learning-online-porn-literacy-sex-education.html">What Teenagers are Learning From Online Porn</a>,” a recent New York Times story by Maggie Jones. It quickly became one of the most read and shared articles.</p>
<p>While this may be a surprise to many American parents who perhaps imagine porn as merely a naked centerfold, it wasn’t to scholars like me who immerse ourselves in the world of mainstream porn. We know how widespread <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077801210382866">violent, degrading and misogynistic</a> pornography has become, as well as the implications for the emotional, physical and mental health of young people. </p>
<p>In an effort to better understand the problem from a “front-line” perspective, feminist activist Samantha Wechsler and I have been traveling the world talking to parents about the issue. The question we’re asked most often is: “What can we do about it?” </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The author talks about the perils of porn.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Hardcore’ porn is everywhere</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/domestic-intelligence/201103/access-pornography-are-parents-concerns-justified">Surveys</a> and our own experiences show that parents are deeply concerned about the easy access their kids now have to porn via mobile devices.</p>
<p>The statistics paint a dismal picture. A <a href="https://www.nspcc.org.uk/globalassets/documents/research-reports/mdx-nspcc-occ-pornography-report.pdf">recent U.K. study</a> found that 65 percent of 15- to 16-year-olds had viewed pornography, the vast majority of whom reported seeing it by age 14. This is especially problematic given the findings of <a href="http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2017/08/pornography-exposure.aspx">another study</a> that found a correlation between early exposure to pornography and an expressed desire to exert power over women. </p>
<p>Yet for all this concern, they know surprisingly little about what mainstream porn looks like, how much their kids are accessing and how it affects them. The Times article, however, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/magazine/teenagers-learning-online-porn-literacy-sex-education.html">cited a 2016 survey</a> that suggested most parents are totally unaware of their kids’ porn experiences. Jones called this the “parental naivete gap.”</p>
<p>This matches our own experiences. In the presentations we do at high schools, we ask parents to describe what they think of when they hear the word “porn.” They invariably describe a naked young woman with a coy smile, the kind of image many remember from Playboy centerfolds. </p>
<p>They are shocked when they learn that the images from today’s busiest free porn sites, like Pornhub, depict <a href="http://robertwjensen.org/articles/by-topic/gender-sexuality-and-pornography/getting-off-pornography-and-the-end-of-masculinity/">acts</a> such as women being gagged with a penis or multiple men penetrating every orifice of a woman and then ejaculating on her face. When we tell parents this, the change in the atmosphere of the room is palpable. There is often a collective gasp. </p>
<p>It bears repeating that these are the most visited porn sites – which get <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/03/internet-porn-stats_n_3187682.html">more visitors every month</a> than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined. Pornhub alone <a href="http://www.pornhub.com/insights/pornhub-2015-year-in-review">received 21.2 billion visits</a> in 2015. We are not talking about images on the fringe. </p>
<p>Ana Bridges, a psychologist at the University of Arkansas, and her team <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077801210382866">found</a> that 88 percent of scenes from 50 of the top-rented porn movies contained physical aggression against the female performers – such as spanking, slapping and gagging – while 48 percent included verbal abuse – like calling women names such as “bitch” or “slut.”</p>
<h2>Bad for your health</h2>
<p>More than 40 years of research from different disciplines has demonstrated that viewing pornography – regardless of age – is associated with harmful outcomes. And <a href="http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/10692/1/BasicallyporniseverywhereReport.pdf">studies show</a> that the younger the age of exposure, the more significant the impact in terms of shaping boys’ sexual templates, behaviors and attitudes. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10720162.2011.625552">2011 study of U.S. college men</a> found that 83 percent reported seeing mainstream pornography in the past 12 months and that those who did were more likely to say they would commit rape or sexual assault (if they knew they wouldn’t be caught) than men who said they had not seen porn.</p>
<p>Another <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0093650208326465">study of young teens</a> found that early porn exposure was correlated with perpetration of sexual harassment two years later. </p>
<p>One of the most cited <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcom.12201/abstract">analyses of 22 studies</a> concluded that pornography consumption is associated with an increased likelihood of committing acts of verbal or physical sexual aggression. And a <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11199-012-0164-0#page-10">study of college-aged women</a> found that young women whose male partners used porn experienced lower self-esteem, diminished relationship quality and lower sexual satisfaction.</p>
<h2>It begins with parents</h2>
<p>Fearing for their children’s well-being, parents at our presentations, whether in Los Angeles, Oslo or Warsaw, want to run home in a panic to have the “porn talk” with their kids.</p>
<p>But in reality, they often have no idea what to say, how to say it, or how to deal with a kid who would rather be anywhere else in the world than sitting across from their parents talking about porn. At the same time, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28215380">public health research</a> shows that <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/childdevelopment/facts.html">parents are the first line of prevention</a> in dealing with any major social problem that affects their kids.</p>
<p>So what can be done?</p>
<p><a href="http://bphc.org/whatwedo/violence-prevention/start-strong/Pages/Start-Strong.aspx">Most current efforts</a> focus on teens themselves and educating them about sex and the perils of porn. Although it is crucial to have high-quality programs for teens who have already been exposed, the fact is that this is cleaning up after the fact rather than preventing the mess in the first place. </p>
<p>So a team of academics, public health experts, educators, pediatricians and developmental psychologists – including us – spent two years pooling research to create a program to help parents become that <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/childdevelopment/facts.html">vital</a> first line of defense.</p>
<p>That’s why the nonprofit we set up – <a href="http://culturereframed.org/">Culture Reframed</a> – <a href="https://parents.culturereframed.org/">initially focused on parents of tweens</a>, addressing a key question: How do we prevent kids from being exposed to images of sexual abuse and degradation at that critical stage when they are forming their sexual identities?</p>
<p>What took shape was <a href="https://parents.culturereframed.org/">a 12-module program</a> that introduces parents sequentially to the developmental changes – emotional, cognitive and physical – that tweens undergo and the hypersexualized pop culture that shapes those changes and is the wallpaper of tween lives.</p>
<p>For example, boys learn from music videos, violent video games, mainstream media and porn that <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Guyland-Perilous-World-Where-Become/dp/0060831359#reader_0060831359">“real men”</a> are aggressive and lack empathy, that sex equals conquest, and that to avoid being bullied, they have to wear the mask of masculinity. <a href="http://www.apa.org/pi/women/programs/girls/report.aspx">Girls</a>, on the other hand, learn that they have to look “hot” to be visible, be as passive as a cartoon princess and internalize the male gaze, leading them to self-objectify at an early age.</p>
<h2>Navigating the porn minefield</h2>
<p>Helping parents grasp the degree to which hypersexualized images shape their tweens encourages them to understand, rather than judge, why their girl wants to look like one of the Kardashians, or why their boy, hazed into hypermasculinity, is at risk of losing his capacity for empathy and connection. This helps parents approach their kids with compassion rather than with frustration and anger that can undermine the parent-child relationship. </p>
<p>Navigating all the minefields of living in today’s toxic porn culture – from sexting and poor self esteem to porn and peer pressure – is very tricky terrain, and parents need all the help they can get. </p>
<p>But ultimately, the Culture Reframed project is about so much more than providing parents with newfound confidence and skills. It’s about taking power back from the porn industry, which is <a href="http://www.beacon.org/Pornland-P765.aspx">out to hijack</a> the sexuality and humanity of kids in the name of profit, and giving it back to parents.</p>
<p><em>Samantha Wechsler, interim executive director of <a href="http://culturereframed.org/">Culture Reframed</a>, co-authored this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91888/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gail Dines is co-founder and president of Culture Reframed, which seeks to recognize and address pornography as a` public health crisis of the digital age.
</span></em></p>While parents are growing more concerned about their children’s easy access to porn, they often don’t realize just how ‘hardcore’ and violent it has become and how early their kids are seeing it.Gail Dines, Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies, Wheelock CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/850022017-10-03T04:36:55Z2017-10-03T04:36:55ZThe philosopher who was too hot for Playboy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188451/original/file-20171002-12107-2cmnoa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Philosopher Herbert Marcuse in 1955. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hugh Hefner, who died on September 28, was the founder of Playboy magazine. Playboy challenged repressive sexual norms and removed guilt around desire - it encouraged men to proposition women a little more. However, around 1970, when Playboy approached radical philosopher Herbert Marcuse for an interview, he gave them a proposition they weren’t expecting.</p>
<p>Marcuse had shot to fame across the US in the late 1960s. A German philosophy professor, who had emigrated in 1934 after fleeing the Nazis, Marcuse was at the grand age of 70 when Playboy phoned. He was highly articulate and measured, but also rather reserved. </p>
<p>His <a href="http://www.beacon.org/The-Essential-Marcuse-P1331.aspx">philosophy, on the other hand, was radical</a>. He called for social transformation. He argued that, although liberal capitalist societies told themselves they were free and democratic, in reality they had pronounced authoritarian and imperialistic tendencies that had evolved alongside the ever-expanding market economy.</p>
<p>Marcuse famously argued that this led to a new kind of social pattern in which our deep drive for freedom and humanistic development was traded off for material comfort in an affluent society. By repressing our sexual desire, emotional expression and creative potential we had learned to “find [our] soul” in our “automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment”. This authoritarian pattern led people to become increasingly alienated. </p>
<p>Marcuse inspired student radicals across the western world through his writings and talks at rallies and demonstrations. Later, when famous, he reached even more people through TV interviews. Marcuse was viewed as the philosopher of sexual liberation. He embodied the zeitgeist in his argument that, despite material affluence, there were deep patterns of class, gender and racial inequality and exploitation. These were held in place via the repression of sexual desire, and of emotional and creative expression. </p>
<p>Given his new-found notoriety, it was only natural that Playboy wanted to do an interview with him. According to former student and friend <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbzhmMDFcFQ">Andrew Feenberg</a>, Playboy had offered Marcuse “a large sum of money” for the interview. After receiving the call, Feenberg recounts, Marcuse considered the proposition carefully. His philosophy was one of radical social equality, which, for him, included a fulsome commitment to gender equality. As such, he decided “it was impossible for him to do it”. Whatever positive effects Playboy had in loosening over-repressive post-war sexual norms, it was part of a process that objectified and commodified women. </p>
<p>But instead of simply declining the offer, however, Marcuse told Playboy he would do the interview, but “only if he could be the centrefold”. The thought of the reserved old German professor, with his “long white hair”, “broad nose” and “enormous ears” (<a href="http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/newsevents/1970/709PlayboyInt.htm">Michael G. Horowitz’s description</a>) gracing the now iconic centre pages of Playboy in 1970 is definitely a rousing one. Unfortunately, the idea didn’t fly with the magazine.</p>
<p>But the way that the philosopher’s “joke” strikes us - simultaneously amusing and jarring - is precisely Marcuse’s point. Sexual desire is structured by social norms. Marcuse saw this as tending to objectify and commodify participants – in the case of Playboy, its readers and the women featured within it (the “bunnies”). In Marcuse’s view, this undermined the possibility of fully connecting our sexuality to our humanity. </p>
<p>While Playboy has had certain cultural effects that, within a limited historical context, can be seen as positive, Marcuse saw Hefner’s philosophy as a narrow and simplistic version of “liberation”, equating “anti-puritanism” to social freedom.</p>
<p>Heffner, via Playboy, did bring sexuality a little more into the open, in a context where that was sorely needed. And his contribution to various liberal causes, including civil rights, has rightly been praised in recent days. His simplistic sexual philosophy, however, is already something of a museum piece - historically significant in its way, but ultimately adolescent male fantasy.</p>
<p>It was a different story for Marcuse. Former student, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbzhmMDFcFQ">Angela Davis</a>, recalls that for his work in support of radical gender equality, one of the early organisations in the women’s movement took the extraordinary step of declaring Marcuse an “honorary woman”. </p>
<p>As for the male nude centrefold, the world had to wait until April 1972 when Cosmopolitan featured Burt Reynolds. A less surprising choice than Marcuse, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3499801/Burt-Reynolds-80-regrets-posing-naked-bearskin-rug-Cosmopolitan-centerfold-1972.html">Reynolds deeply regretted the decision</a>, believing it had negative effects on his career.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85002/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Pollard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Around 1970 Playboy magazine received an unexpected proposition from the radical German philosopher Herbert Marcuse - he would do an interview, if he could pose for the magazine’s centrefold.Christopher Pollard, Tutor in Philosophy and Sociology, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/848532017-09-29T14:26:10Z2017-09-29T14:26:10ZHow Hugh Hefner’s world helped Donald Trump get into the White House<p>Hugh Hefner, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/sep/28/hugh-hefner-founder-of-playboy-magazine-dies-aged-91">who has died</a> at the age of 91, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/sep/28/hugh-hefner-obituary">considered himself</a> the luckiest man on the planet. And with his silk pyjamas, bunny girls and private jets, he managed to have quite an impact on the modern world. </p>
<p>As the founder of Playboy magazine, he revolutionised the imagery of heterosexuality in popular culture, changing people’s bedroom and courtship habits in the process. He may even have influenced the path of modern American politics.</p>
<p>Hefner launched Playboy in the early 1950s, when the norm of American popular culture was depicted by images of wholesome families in the home by the likes of <a href="https://www.nrm.org/collections-2/art-norman-rockwell/">illustrator Norman Rockwell</a>. It was a period when American society was experiencing <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/books/review/Powers-t.html?mcubz=0">waves of moral panic</a> over the corrupting influence of comic books on youth. </p>
<p>But while Disney was producing <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047757/">The Mickey Mouse Club</a> on television, Hefner was taking young women barely a few years older than its star <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002088/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm">Annette Funicello</a>, and publishing pictures of them, scantily-clad, in his magazine. </p>
<p>With Playboy, Hefner legitimised the kind of photographic depiction of female nudity that had previously been the remit of privately viewed postcards or pinups in men’s locker rooms. All of a sudden, however much social conservatives and cultural critics frowned, nude women were on display in a mainstream magazine. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188161/original/file-20170929-19823-1sqf8qg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188161/original/file-20170929-19823-1sqf8qg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188161/original/file-20170929-19823-1sqf8qg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188161/original/file-20170929-19823-1sqf8qg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188161/original/file-20170929-19823-1sqf8qg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188161/original/file-20170929-19823-1sqf8qg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188161/original/file-20170929-19823-1sqf8qg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Hanging out with Hugh.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/hollywood-august-18-holly-madison-hugh-130539233?src=K_cZLUyipfoEX8slpEOkdQ-1-20">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>The 1950s was a decade of resurgent social conservatism in the US. The government partnered up with the business world to shepherd the population back into the home from World War II and industrial assembly lines. Returning soldiers were supposed to marry their sweethearts, go to college, move with their families to the newly built suburbs and commute to work by train or in the new family car. </p>
<p>Yet even at the height of this new “normalcy”, voices in the mainstream were expressing doubts about the impact of conformity on the soul of the population. Novels like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/sep/18/featuresreviews.guardianreview26">Revolutionary Road</a> depicted couples trapped in the new middle-class existence. Books including <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/yelp-and-the-wisdom-of-the-lonely-crowd">The Lonely Crowd</a> and <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/what-the-organization-man-can-tell-us-about-inequality-today">The Organization Man</a> were critical of a uniformity that threatened to make people automatons and emasculate men. </p>
<p>On screen, films such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048545/">Rebel Without a Cause</a> grappled with the panic over juvenile delinquency – suburban teenagers full of drive (sexual and otherwise), but no direction, rebelling against any and all social authority.</p>
<p>It was from this mainstream conformity that Playboy promised to help men break away. As scholars such as <a href="http://barbaraehrenreich.com/barbara-ehrenreich-bio/">Barbara Ehrenreich</a> have pointed out, Hefner sold social rebellion packaged in business culture – the life of an eternal bachelor, who can wine and dine women and take them to bed, but drop them like a hot potato if the word “marriage” is even mentioned. </p>
<p>Hefner empowered men to cast aside the millstones of being a grown-up, and behave like boys in adult bodies – with adult sex drives. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"913240335358111744"}"></div></p>
<p>Hefner and his magazine created aspirations for American men which involved a radical switch from the earlier social customs of committed courtship or “going steady”. They embraced a culture of men dating freely – and not even exclusively. Playboy was selling the James Bond lifestyle to middle-class men. </p>
<p>Emboldened by the increasing availability of female contraception, men bought not only Playboy, but also the products advertised in it. They spent their money on bachelor pads, stereo systems, high-end kitchen equipment – all in a bid to practice what Hefner preached. </p>
<h2>Naked ambition</h2>
<p>But aside from the material side of things, the millionaire publisher saw himself as a social activist. It is true that he championed freedom from censorship. Hefner also hired African-American comedian and activist Dick Gregory <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hugh-hefner-gave-dick-gregory-his-big-break-1043953">to work at his club</a> in 1961, in the midst of civil rights tensions across America. </p>
<p>Earlier, in 1955, his magazine included a satirical science fiction story, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/09/28/for-hugh-hefner-gay-rights-were-part-of-the-sexual-revolution/?utm_term=.85a5843322cf">The Crooked Man, by Charles Beaumont</a> about heterosexual men being persecuted in a homosexual society. Justifying its controversial publication Hefner wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society, then the reverse was wrong too.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet Playboy also depicted women only as sexual toys for men or as “gold diggers” – busy laying the marital trap that should be avoided by single men at all costs. </p>
<p>Hefner may have also promoted the kind of persona that helped carry Donald Trump to the White House. In 1983, the owner of Playboy’s magazine rival Hustler, Larry Flynt, <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/qkbzjx/larry-flynt-profile-2016">ran for president</a> as a libertarian candidate. He was not a major contender, but the straight-talking alpha male has become a familiar feature of political office – think California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, or <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001818/">Jesse Ventura</a> in Minnesota. </p>
<p>Donald Trump socialised with Hefner, appeared on a front cover of Playboy magazine, and was the subject of interviews in its pages. </p>
<p>With his regular and showy involvement in the beauty pageant industry, Trump was clearly a “Hefnerite” entrepreneur. The 45th president’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-having-extremely-lewd-conversation-about-women-in-2005/2016/10/07/3b9ce776-8cb4-11e6-bf8a-3d26847eeed4_story.html?utm_term=.d17714b670d4">words about women</a>, privately and publicly, may have actually endeared him to some male voters as someone who “tells it like it is”. He is presented as someone who speaks his mind like a “real man” – not caring a whit about offending progressive sensibilities. </p>
<p>These male voters may have felt “oppressed” by political correctness as much as Hefner’s followers felt trampled by the imperative to marry. The Trump brand may be even more brash than Playboy – but there is much of Hefner in it. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/playboy-magazines-return-to-nudity-is-a-naked-bid-to-cover-up-its-irrelevance-73179">Playboy magazine's return to nudity is a naked bid to cover up its irrelevance</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84853/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gyorgy Toth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>He changed how we see women, sex, and politicians.Gyorgy Toth, Lecturer, Post-1945 US History and Transatlantic Relations, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/848412017-09-28T07:15:05Z2017-09-28T07:15:05ZHugh Hefner, Playboy, and being a man during the Cold War<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187950/original/file-20170928-1476-fz6z0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine, has died age 91. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/DAL ZENNARO</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As news broke today that Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy, had died aged 91, many were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/sep/28/hugh-hefner-founder-of-playboy-magazine-dies-aged-91">quick to point to</a> the complicated legacy of both the magazine and the man behind it. <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/playboy-clubs-201105">Now popularly associated</a> with his bevy of young lovers and infamous parties at the Playboy mansion, it would be easy to dismiss Hefner as merely an enduring barrier to the fight for gender equality. Yet to do so would to overlook the significant cultural impact of both Hefner and Playboy, particularly during the 1950s under the shroud of Cold War anxieties. </p>
<p>Born April 9, 1926 in Chicago, Illinois, Hefner’s entry into the world of journalism came as a teenager writing for a military magazine during World War II. After graduating from the University of Illinois, he began working as a copy-editor for men’s magazine Esquire, before a pay dispute motivated him to leave the magazine in 1952. </p>
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<p><em><strong>Further reading:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/playboy-magazines-return-to-nudity-is-a-naked-bid-to-cover-up-its-irrelevance-73179">Playboy magazine’s return to nudity is a naked bid to cover up its irrelevance</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>He took out a mortgage and borrowed money from his mother to launch Playboy in 1953. The first issue, which famously featured Marilyn Monroe in the centrefold, indicated the magazine’s explicit engagement with matters of sex, fun, and consumerism. In doing so, it challenged the idea of masculinity that had evolved around the nuclear family, and that held particular purchase in the early years of Cold War America. </p>
<h2>A new man</h2>
<p>The nuclear family - a mum, dad, and kids - was seen as an important barrier to communism in the years after World War II. This relied on specific roles for men and women to uphold the strength of the family and, by extension, the security of the nation. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187951/original/file-20170928-1476-1kibkhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187951/original/file-20170928-1476-1kibkhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187951/original/file-20170928-1476-1kibkhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187951/original/file-20170928-1476-1kibkhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187951/original/file-20170928-1476-1kibkhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187951/original/file-20170928-1476-1kibkhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187951/original/file-20170928-1476-1kibkhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187951/original/file-20170928-1476-1kibkhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The first cover of Playboy magazine in 1953.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playboy">Wikimedia</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>For American men who had returned from war, being a “proper” man meant marriage, procreation, and breadwinning. Women were in control of the domestic space. To fall short of this was, as the scholar <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Hearts_of_Men.html?id=3SBFAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y">Barbara Ehrenreich</a> notes, to be “less than grown up … the man who willingly deviated was judged to be somehow ‘less than a man’.” </p>
<p>Playboy dared to go beyond these expectations. Rather than restricting masculinity to the suburban malaise of postwar America, Playboy offered a model of manhood that was intelligent, fun, and sexy and, crucially, set in opposition to marriage. </p>
<p>Such a model was surely inspired by Hefner’s own restlessness. Married to Mildred “Millie” Williams in 1949, he was already feeling the monotony of suburban life. The conventional markers of masculine success – a beautiful wife, a successful job, and an impressive home – left him, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Bunny.html?id=vhtlAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">according to his biographer Russell Miller</a>, “bored beyond belief”. They divorced in 1959. </p>
<p>Hefner, through his life and Playboy, turned the home from a woman’s domain to an expression of a man’s sophistication and “urbane personality”. This man could be interested in art, foreign films and literature (the magazine is famously remembered for publishing the works of authors like Ray Bradbury and Jack Kerouac), and took pleasure in bachelorhood, eagerly eschewing marriage and family. </p>
<p>In contrast, the mid-century Australian periodical <a href="http://www-tandfonline-com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/doi/abs/10.1080/14443058.2014.1001422">Man magazine</a>, was a place for men to dream of a life outside marriage, but ultimately accept their fate. Playboy rejected these notions. </p>
<h2>Hefner and women</h2>
<p>Of course, Playboy’s attitude towards women is rightly remembered as problematic at best. The early years of the magazine portrayed American women as emasculating, money-hungry and obsessed with tricking a man into marriage. Such representations are surely offensive, but they speak to an uncertainty and tension that was circulating in the cultural landscape of the postwar US. </p>
<p>As the historian <a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo11119486.html">Carrie Pitzulo</a> notes, to say that Playboy is sexist is nothing new. Indeed in his later years, surrounded by a throng of young, attractive women, Hefner seemed to embrace the lifestyle that Playboy advocated to an almost parodic extent. More recently, Playboy’s attitude to women has been demonstrated by its on-off <a href="https://theconversation.com/playboy-magazines-return-to-nudity-is-a-naked-bid-to-cover-up-its-irrelevance-73179">relationship with nudity</a>. </p>
<p>However, we might look at Playboy’s early years as evidence that masculinity in the 1950s was more complex than popular memories acknowledge, and of the cultural upheaval that Hefner and his iconic publication produced.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84841/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chelsea Barnett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine, has died age 91. While many have pointed to Playboy’s problematic relationship with women, when it first appeared in 1953 the magazine was a challenge to Cold War men.Chelsea Barnett, Historian, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/731792017-02-21T12:59:41Z2017-02-21T12:59:41ZPlayboy magazine’s return to nudity is a naked bid to cover up its irrelevance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157692/original/image-20170221-18646-cn4axr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The bunny brand.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Playboy magazine’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38963007">announcement</a> that it will be bringing naked pictorials back to its pages after a year’s absence was strangely timed to coincide with Valentine’s Day. But it was not a declaration that pulled at my heartstrings.</p>
<p>Cooper Hefner, the 25-year-old son of Playboy founder Hugh, and now the magazine’s chief creative officer, said removing nude images had been a mistake. Under the hashtag #NakedIsNormal, he wrote on Twitter: “Today we’re taking our identity back and reclaiming who we are.”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"831169811723939842"}"></div></p>
<p>The “we” in that statement has been drooping steadily for years. After <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3063538/First-copy-Playboy-magazine-featuring-Marilyn-Monroe-naked-set-fetch-2-700-auction.html">Playboy launched in 1953</a> with Marilyn Monroe as its centrefold, sales peaked in 1972 when the November issue featuring Lenna Sjööblom sold 7.16m copies.</p>
<p>In the decades that followed, the publication spawned an entire global empire synonymous with a certain kind of louche bachelorhood. There were clubs in big cities, a private jet bearing the bunny head logo chartered by icons like Elvis, and the famous Hollywood passion palace sex parties, presided over by Hef in his cult-leader robes. </p>
<p>The fact that his Bunny Girls were belittlingly trussed up like rabbits was a supposedly humorous nod to their penchant for frequent mating.</p>
<p>While never quite as gynaecological as its rivals during what were dubbed “The Pubic Wars” with more explicit magazines like Penthouse and Hustler, all roads to today’s on-demand hetero-normative online porn lead back to Playboy’s original efforts to naturalise it.</p>
<p>But by 2015, Playboy‘s <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/11/phttp://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/11/playboy-magazine-by-the-numbers.htmllayboy-magazine-by-the-numbers.html">annual circulation was just 800,000</a>. Then, in late 2014, the editors relaunched the website as one that would be considered “suitable for work”. This was not to appease feminists, but to update its geriatric business model. And it worked. Viewings shot up 400%, from 4m unique views in July to 16m in December that year. The average age of site visitors dropped from 47 to just over 30.</p>
<p>The no-nude policy was extended to the magazine a year later. But Hef’s son, also no stranger to sporting silk pyjamas, reversed the move the moment he stepped up in the midst of his father’s failing health.</p>
<p>But given what’s on the web, it is not so much the parade of airbrushed flesh arranged carefully in stately homes that disturbs me. It’s the editorial ideology that surrounds these images of upscale masculine identity based on individualism, consumption and sexual pleasure without responsibility or commitment. If men are financially successful, the message appears to be, then they are entitled to consume luxury, whether that’s a Bugatti or a beautiful teenager.</p>
<p>Playboy defenders – and <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/2009/01/pandagon-playboy_defenders_youre_embarrassing_yourselves/">there are many</a> – cite wearisome claptrap about how the magazine empowers women. Apparently many women work in Playboy’s editorial towers and the shoots are deemed a creative collaboration between the magazine and the model. With megastars like <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/kate-moss-playboy-cover-revealed-8978435.html#gallery">Kate Moss</a> and Scarlett Johansson gracing the pages it’s got to be alright, girls, hasn’t it? Lighten up! It’s no different to when pop singers and film stars objectify themselves via social media. </p>
<p>But again, it’s about the patriarchal packaging. Successful female icons “doing Playboy” – a quintessentially male product – symbolically disarms the threat of women being successful on their own terms without the help of men. </p>
<p>Worryingly, the 2017 rebrand under more youthful leadership is peddled to younger men by featuring, somewhat creepily, a Harry Potter child actor in next month’s issue. It can be no coincidence that Scarlett Byrne, who played Patsy Parkinson in the trilogy, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4225982/Harry-Potter-actress-Scarlett-Bryne-poses-Playboy.html">is to pose alongside an editorial</a> entitled “The Feminist Mystique”, extolling the virtues of female nakedness for the male gaze. This also overtly sticks a finger up to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Betty-Friedan">Betty Friedan</a>’s powerful 1963 work <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Feminine-Mystique">The Feminine Mystique</a>, embraced by second wave feminists.</p>
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<p>With a virginal-looking ingenue gracing the first nude issue in over a year, Playboy’s latest iteration of its elderly editorial imperative eases any tensions around gender blurring in the age of transsexuality, gay marriage and co-parenting. Men, you can feel appeased that your masculinity isn’t in crisis. The Hefner brand proffers a space where men and women have naturally different roles and functions and should adhere to ensure the smooth running of the social order.</p>
<p>Women, amid the barrage of conflicting signals about who we should be, can find our natural uncomplicated home in lingerie, with men who won’t try to demean us by putting a ring on our finger. Because, it seems that for some, although women can be more than wives and mothers, their primary purpose is still to be of service to men’s pleasure. It’s just another form of female domesticity outlined by Friedan, with the Hefner mansion the ultimate temple, peeling and moth-eaten but with a strong padlock on the front door.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73179/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Niblock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The pornographic publication is getting back to basics in a battle for survival.Sarah Niblock, Associate Dean, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.