And 613 is how many photos appear in”The Playmate Book: Six Decades of Centerfolds,”by Gretchen Edgren, according to this article in the New Yorker entitled “The Girls Next Door,” by Joan Acocella, in which one learns:
In January of 1958, the magazine had published a centerfold of a sixteen-year-old girl, with the result that Hefner was hauled into court for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. (The case was dismissed. Miss January had written permission from her mother.) After that, he made a rule that Playboy would never again publish a photograph of an unclothed woman under eighteen, but in the following years he did everything in his power to make the centerfold models look like jailbait. Two of the sixties Playmates have pigtails, tied with bows. One is reading the funny papers. Most of them have chubby cheeks, and flash us sweet smiles. At the same time, many of these nice little girls are fantastically large-breasted.
How did these women wind up on the pages of Playboy? According to Acocella:
When they were offered the centerfold, some were posing for calendars; others were waitressing at Hooters or working in hair salons. Several were single mothers. And though a few tell of having to change their names so as not to embarrass the folks back home, others report that their families urged them to seize this opportunity. Miss March 1968 got into Playboy because her grandmother wrote to the magazine,”My granddaughter is much better looking and much bustier than any of the girls you’ve been shooting.”
While I am generally exuberantly in favor of stereotype-defying, especially with respect to older women and their relationships to sex and sexuality, that last sentence made me a bit queasy, as did an Esquire editor’s observation that”Playboy out-titted us.” And how “empowering” was the long term effect of being a Playboy centerfold?
Not surprisingly … many of the Playmates, once they passed their twenties, fell back into regular life. One is a dental hygienist for dogs and cats, two are cops, one taught creative writing at the City University of New York. Several have become artists. Miss September 1998 is a”traditional Aztec dancer”; Judy Tyler, Miss January 1966, creates”Fronds by Judea:original art from palm trees.”Miss July 1999 is making”hip-hop action sports videos”with her boyfriend.”I want to be taken seriously,”she says,”because I intend to be a good producer one day.”Quite a few of the ex-Playmates, in keeping with the book’s insistent claim of normality, list their families as their sole and beloved project. At the same time, the text is very forthcoming about how many divorces these women have had, and how a number of them are no longer eager to have a man in the house. Several Playmates have found God. Debra Jo Fondren, the gorgeous Miss September 1977, who now does temporary secretarial work, reports that she finally stopped participating in Playboy promotions. There was”too much emphasis on sex,”she explains.
I offer this as part of a project to explore the feminist divide over “raunch” and pornography. I admit I can’t find anything feminist or pro-feminst about Playboy, but anyone is welcome to point out in a comment or e-mail (feministlawprof@yahoo.com) what it is that I am missing, and I will post same here if it is expressed in a cogent and civil manner.
–Ann Bartow
One set of facts that defy an easy call on this is that Christine Hefner is the CEO of Playboy and the company apparently has women in many key roles, not merely in front of the camera. Hefner is well respected as a business leader and is a pretty big mover and shaker in Chicago liberal politics. Here’s a fairly recent Forbes article: http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/2005/07/26/Playboy-CEO-goodlife-cz_ww_0726good_ls.html?partner=rss
I apologize if the link doesn’t work.
The link worked just fine, but the article doesn’t clarify much for me. Does”Christie”identify as a feminist? Has she ever been a centerfold, or appeared naked in the magazine? Have any of the other female execs?
That she is a pro-porn liberal is fairly instrumentalist, don’t you think?
I don’t know whether Hefner self-identifies as feminist, and I’m not sure how to answer. I mean, on the one hand she’s the queen of this empire that has grown on the objectification of women (not particularly empowering), and which has helped make that objectification somewhat iconic. On the other hand, she’s a powerful woman, demonstrating that women can be powerful, bringing a struggling company back into financial health, and mentoring some other women along the way–most notably not the ones in front of the camera though, on whose backs this empire is built. So, I wouldn’t say this is an instance of empowerment, necessarily through the use of one’s own body to provoke a response in the viewer (and thus presumably a feminist exercise), but I also don’t know whether I think that the empowerment that raunch or porn can bring is worth the cost of reinforcing the objectification of other women. She’s both exploiter and strong woman who brings certain women with her. Can you be both feminist and an exploiter of women? I would say no, but maybe there’s an argument there.
If i looked like some of those playboy centerfolds i’d be happy to be “exploited” especially for a nice chunk of cash. the human body is beautiful and people (men and women and myself included) enjoy looking at pretty women. not sure why Ms. Hefner needs to be looked upon as a she devil for successfully running playboy. “empowerment” is one of the most vapid, trite and ultimately meaningless phrases in academia.