Over fifty years after its birth, when most of its contemporary eyebrow-raisers have since fizzled away to “quaint” (think drive-in movies), the magazine Playboy still carries an aura of subversion. First published in December 1953, Playboy began on the dining table of Hugh Hefner and, characterized by its rebellious streak, went on to become one of the most popular and long-lived magazines in American history. Many of the companies represented in its advertisements have come and gone, some of the men interviewed in its pages have passed away, and “Hef” no longer heads the magazine, but its essential form has remained the same: ads, interviews, culture pieces, cartoons, and the infamous centerfold.
Much has been written about Hugh Hefner’s infamous publication, but most of it has been on women. Scholars have lambasted the sexual objectification, the commoditization, and the whitewashing of women’s bodies. Even the Supreme Court has heard evidence that this depiction is harmful to women. But this furor has completely obscured the real targets of Playboy: the predominantly male readership. Does this mean that Playboy doesn’t affect men? Surely a publication has the biggest impact on those who actually read it. So what effect has it had? And what accounts for the longevity of both Playboy’s shock value and its circulation?
While Playboy is a household name in our post-sexual-revolution era, its spirit doesn’t fit with our remembrance of the time from which it sprang. In nostalgic hindsight, the 1950s were a pink and blue era, characterized by Jello, poodle skirts, and girls and boys who knew their places. Mom stayed home, Dad went to work, and when the day was over, they slept in separate twin beds. There’s no room for sex in our airbrushed remembrance of the Eisenhower years.
But apparently, sex there was, at least in its proper place. Contrary to popular belief, Playboy was by no means the only source of nude pictures available. Much more hardcore publications were widely distributed, but none approached the circulation of Playboy, which reached a round million by its sixth year. One possible reason is that sex and women in Playboy were different; Playboy sold women the way it sold any other product: as a lifestyle promise. “Women” were simplified to the generic white model, posed in a studio, and slipped in between an article on the Complete Sports Car Stable and instructions on how to equip a home bar.
In an advertising campaign aimed at both creating a clear picture of Hefner’s desired readership and dispelling any underground flavor the magazine might have, Playboy ran a series of back-page advertisements centered on the theme, “Who is a playboy?” Next to a sketch of an upper class businessman ran the answer: “He can be a sharp-minded young business executive, a worker in the arts, a university professor, an architect or an engineer. A man who can live life to the hilt.”
For Hefner’s playboy, “living life to the hilt” meant high-level consumption. This wasn’t just any everyday life the editors were attempting to link with their publication; it was a middle class lifestyle that was on its way up after the war, with time to kill and money to spend. A researcher at the Kinsey Institute once commented that, “Hefner’s genius was to associate sex with upward mobility.” Through Playboy, Hefner offered men more than an ejaculation; he sold them a way of life.
How did this translate to constructions of masculinity? As Playboy’s name suggests, the magazine touted Hefner’s belief that, “American men experienced their manhood most profoundly when they were boys at play, not men at work,” a radical shift from the manhood of the rugged cowboy and serious soldier that pervaded the first half of the century. By making men into boys and women into shop wares, Playboy separated sexual need from social needs. The woman in the centerfold addressed the reader’s sexual needs, but it was other men, in the interviews, in the articles, and at the famous Hefner parties, that satisfied the reader’s social needs. Most basically, in Playboy’s world, men are forced to choose between either sex or companionship in their relationships with other human beings. Women couldn’t provide both (as Hefner once put it, wives were the “natural enemy of men”), and other men certainly couldn’t (as enforced by Hefner’s rabid homophobia).
It is possible to separate emotional attachment from sex, but at what cost? This compartmentalization, while it rightfully allows space for intense homosociality, artificially compartmentalizes social interactions and stunts human relationships. While its depictions of women have undoubtedly been harmful to women throughout Playboy’s lifetime, the lifestyle directions it gives to men have been equally destructive. Even now, when Playboy’s influence is not so great, such compartmentalization is expected, even encouraged. When the boys came home from World War II, we were poised to redefine masculinity, and the brand Playboy offered was an unapologetic consumerism with severe disjunction in social relationships. It succeeded because Christie Hefner’s quote continues to ring true: “Men buy Playboy for the centerfold and read it for the package.”
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