[April 2017 update: Playboy has since reversed this decision.]
Playboy magazine’s decision to stop featuring fully naked photo spreads garnered the predictable response.
So, quipped almost everyone, now we really will have to read it for the articles.
The truth, of course, is that people (mostly men) have always read Playboy for the articles. Over its 62 years, it has published some excellent journalism and fiction. It has engaged in important conversations and while its record on some issues is tarnished, it has championed some worthwhile causes.
But it has always objectified women, even if it has presented that objectification as empowerment, and to many people that is an unforgiveable crime.
What do I think about it? Well, it’s complicated.
About eight years ago, I went to the Playboy Mansion in West Hollywood at the invitation of E! Entertainment, the cable TV station that was then producing a “reality” show called The Girls Next Door in America, and The Girls of the Playboy Mansion in other markets.
I met Hugh Hefner, the magazine’s creator and editor in chief, and his then three “girlfriends” — Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson. In a formal media conference, I spoke to Hefner and to the three women, and formed the opinion that nobody was being hurt and that the relationship being presented in the show, while unconventional and perhaps unconscionable to some people, was consensual (and somewhat exaggerated).
Here’s what Hefner had to say then about Madison and their bedroom arrangements:
I later spent some time talking to Madison alone as she gave me a guided tour of the grounds’ zoo, games room and swimming pool, including its storied grotto.
Madison is now making a lot of claims about Hefner and her time at the mansion. My only comment is that what she is saying now is not what she was saying then. I am willing to believe, though, that while a lot of people have been helped by their association with Hefner, perhaps more have been hurt.
Playboy, the mansion, the TV show and everything that surrounds them can be seen as being tawdry. Was it of its time in the 1960s and 70s? I don’t know. But it certainly is not now. Perhaps the age of the men’s magazine is over.
If so, the so too is the day of the women’s magazine, especially those that trade only in celebrity gossip and other tabloid trash, much of it invented.
How about a new form of popular magazine journalism that seeks only to tell the truth in an engaging way?
