Huh?
Playboy has always been full of articles about what stereo system The Modern Man needs for his living room, or which cigar he should be smoking. They didn’t “embrace the yuppie lifestyle in the 90s”; the magazine has always been a sort of nekkid Cigar Aficionado.
Playboy was never really countercultural. It always combined its culturally liberal attitudes with consumerism. It always made it clear that to be a good playboy you had to wear the right clothes, smoke the right pipe, listen to the right music using the right stereo system, decorate your bachelor pad in the right way, own the right car, etc. I remember once laughing when I read about some preacher fulminating about “hippies with their Playboy Philosophy.” Hippies and Playboy readers generally disliked each other.
Furthermore, although they believed in tolerance of homosexuality, they always made it clear that their own readers weren’t gay. They also made it clear that although they didn’t have any big problems with women’s liberation, the women that the playboy slept with was supposed to go home afterwards and not bother him with notions like fidelity. How is a playboy supposed to have time and money to buy all those clothes, stereo systems, cars, etc. if he has to worry about taking care of some woman, let alone some kids?
That seems like the sort of thing that would be seen by their target audience not just as having zero value, but as having negative value. Given a choice between buying a 100-page magazine with 30 pages of naked women and buying a 120-page magazine with 30 pages of naked women and 20 pages of naked men, wouldn’t many men choose the former?
In the '60s and '70s, Playboy published some great short fiction by the top science fiction and mystery writers (they were known as the highest-paying magazine for short stories). Do they still publish any notable fiction?
Meh. The whole concept was dated in the 70s, so much so that it now has a retro revival feel about it. The idea was that men of taste who appreciated fine wines and cigars should also appreciate fine women using the same aesthetic approach. Playboy’s marketing tried to break the old nexus between dirty books and shame by making a connection with the illusion of a wealthy lifestyle it promoted.
This is all about as dated as Roger Moore’s Bond. Real women are not impressed by supercilious sneers, a patronising air and an obviously insecure brand label addiction.
The style culminates in those ads where some bloke is standing, legs planted firmly on the ground but apart in a macho pose. He has his arms crossed or on his hips and is wearing his (insert clothesmaker of the month here) safari suit. One or more adoring, dependent women is/are on the ground draping their arms around his legs in a sort of pleading gesture while he, ignoring those on the ground, is focussing his attention upwards and out of shot. The triumph of Man as disdainful consumer of disposable women.
Any man who actually tried to take the advice of Playboy about the right cars, clothes, cigars and general demeanour was IME universally treated as a wanker by actual women. I guess the magazine’s success as promoter of lifestyle was built on the illusion that most of the readership were classy, wealthy, sophisticated, alpha-male guys, and if you (the reader) just happened not to be, reading the magazine could help make up for that. In truth, most of the readers were schmoes who couldn’t afford the stuff being advertised and so had no way of knowing that buying it didn’t buy cool.
Why is it still going? I guess its earlier success has bought it some cultural momentum. A new generation of insecure men looks to the cultural icon Playboy became, still not knowing that its method of commodifying women is never going to work outside fantasy.
Having read more than one Playboy in the 70’s and 80’s I think you’re painting kind of a cartooney picture of the context of the advice and editorial posture of the magazine. Many of the reviews of fine clothing, cars, books, wines, stereo equipment etc. were extraordinarily well done by reviewers with a depth of knowledge about the subjects. Playboy of the 70’s era never took itself too seriously (except when defending free speech) and that was part of it’s appeal.
Playboy was not antagonistic toward the women’s liberation movement or female social equity, and in fact embraced both these concepts as part of a larger context of sexual freedom. Several Playboy interviews were conducted with seminal figures in the feminist/women’s liberation movement.
You are aware, aren’t you, how controversial Playboy is in the feminist community? A great deal of feminists despise Playboy. You’re accepting Hugh Hefner’s philosophy without questioning. Just because he thinks that his attitudes are favorable towards a given thing doesn’t mean that everyone else does.
Why does having good reviewers of “fine clothing, cars, books, wines, stereo equipment etc.” mean that they took them didn’t take them too seriously? The very idea of having reviewers of those subjects means that they took them somewhat seriously. “Too seriously” is in the eye of the beholder. The ads in Playboy are a better index of the attitudes of the magazine than the reviews are. Having some negative reviews of consumer goods doesn’t mean that a magazine is opposed to consumer goods.
A feminist’s view of Playboy and multiple comments on her observations.
Worth the read! That was amusing.
You dare malign a goddess?! My seconds will call upon you, sir!
Seriously- if any part(s) of Jennifer Love Hewitt were to take up two pages, it sure as hell wouldn’t be her forehead.
And who the hell would even notice such a thing?
Not for a second.
Back to the Watts book I mentioned before. He argues convincingly that Hef was totally blindsided by the woman’s liberation movement. They called him on the exploitation of young women and on his advocacy of the double standard. That last really hurt because he kept insisting that none of his multiple girlfriends cheat on him and his philandering and insistence on their subservience eventually broke up every relationship he had.
Hef had thought that he was a force for sexual liberation, which was true. What he could never realize was that his idea of sexual liberation was completely male-oriented. Virtually every major figure in the woman’s movement blasted Hef and did so over a period of decades. That was one factor in Playboy’s looking so dated after the 1970s. (There were a bunch of others, of course.)
It wasn’t until some women in the movement took the crusade too far - the whole sex is rape trope - that some of the older enemies like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem eventually made peace with him (and gave interviews). They weren’t happy that the “Playboy is porn” cause got hijacked by the Christian conservative movement. While politics can get strange bedfellows together on an issue, the liberationists had virtually nothing else in common with the fundamentalists. Hef turned out to be right on that one, even if he was still vulnerable on all the other counts. He did give lip service to political and workplace equality and added more female perspectives after the 70s, but the mixture never really gelled.
If you want to wade through it, Watts’ book does give a good overview of how issue politics succeeds and fails. Every side in the argument had some points they were correct on and every side had blindnesses that they couldn’t recognize. Which was dominant at any moment depended on what the greater society was like and how it changed in response to these and other forces.
Playboy was, is, and will always be for male notions of sexuality, as long as Hef lives. Playboy is not porn, though, and never was. That murky middle ground is what offers a vast battlefield for its foes.
A friend of mine still gets Playboy, and I flipped through a couple recent issues the last time I was at his house. Felt like I was looking at cartoons. The airbrushing and plastic surgery is out of control.
I see at least one of the British tabloids has adopted a “no implants” policy. I would support that. (So to speak.)
Playboy has a lot of problems. First is nobody in management wants to change a magazine that sells three million copies a month. That is huge.
They are not realizing all the income they could get from their mechanizing. The Rabbit Head is well-known but is easily cheapened. They have not licensed Rabbit Head car air freshener in a generation, but everyone still remember how tacky it was.
Then of course they are torn between becoming more explicit (see point one) and losing one segment or remaining tame and never gaining younger readers. There is a reason why Playboy does not want people to know they own Spice. Spice is too crude for the Playboy brand.
Solution? Establish a lad’s magazine using the huge resources of the PB empire to dominate the US market. At the same time, return to the club/casino business and compete against Hooters. Continue a multi-prong approach to video.
If Playboy dies off as a magazine, the corporation would have diversified in a sector they could dominate.
A friend of mine has been a Playboy subscriber for a long time (he’s in his late 30s now). I honestly don’t think he’s particularly interested in the cigars-and-stereos content; he’s, quite frankly, a hick from rural Wisconsin, who’s far more interested in deer hunting and drinking. And, he also tends to buy the special pictoral issues that Playboy puts out from time to time, which are nothing but pictures of naked models.
But, I also note that his sense of humor, and his general view of women, probably hasn’t changed since he was 15. And, I suspect that’s why he still subscribes to Playboy.