Thank You, Hugh Hefner, And Goodbye

The internet is awash today with tributes and obituaries for Hugh Hefner, and it would be foolish of me to write another one. But I did want to say one thing.

If you came to your sexual maturity after 1990 or so, you’re probably wondering right now why the internet is losing its shit over the death of an old creep who objectified women relentlessly. As well you might. 21st-century Hugh Hefner was a cruel parody of the man being remembered so fondly in all those obituaries today. The sexual revolution moved on from him, far beyond him in fact… but never forget HOW MUCH HE DID FOR IT.

You have literally no idea how bad things were, sexually, in the world into which Hugh Hefner published the first Playboy. Neither do I; I’m not that old. But I saw my first porn in the 1970s, and I can tell you this: if Hugh Hefner didn’t invent sex positivity (as I’m sure he did not) he sure as fuck carried a bunch of the load of its early promotion.

In that era porn was sleazy, and grim as hell. It was mostly garbage made by mafia dudes, full of racist slurs and misogyny. Every woman in it was a bitch, a slut, a whore, or a tramp, with some kind of racial slur appended with a hyphen if she wasn’t white. Do I exaggerate? Sure, some. But those were the prevalent attitudes. What Hugh Hefner brought to the party was a whole new aesthetic. He said “We’re men, and we like sex, and there’s nothing wrong with that, and here’s a magazine full of culture and literature and pretty nude women, and you don’t have to be ashamed to read it or a dick about being the kind of man who enjoys it, and the ladies don’t have to be ashamed to be photographed in it, and we can all party together at my house, and it’s the new American future, and there’s not one damned thing wrong with it, and the people who don’t like it? They can go to hell.”

Sure. He got old, and he didn’t keep up, and he became a figure of derision or sympathy depending on how much respect and empathy you’ve got in your soul. But what he did for the toxic culture of sexuality in this country in the second half of the 20th century was an enormous fucking gift. Thank you, Hugh Hefner. Goodbye.

Roger Ebert on Playboy

Yesterday Dr. Faustus happened to email me a link to a review by Roger Ebert of a new documentary about Hugh Hefner. I found Ebert’s commentary about the social significance of Playboy magazine to be more interesting than his take on the movie, though:

You may believe Playboy was the enemy of women. It objectified their bodies. It schooled men to regard them as sex objects. It stood for all that feminists fought to correct. There is some truth to that, but it doesn’t impact upon my experience, and the best I can do here is be truthful.

Nobody taught me to regard women as sex objects. I always did. Most men do. And truth to tell, most women regard men as sex objects. We regard many other aspects of another person, but sex is the elephant in the room. Evolution has hard-wired us that way. When we meet a new person, in some small recess of our minds we evaluate that person as a sex partner. We don’t act on it, we don’t dwell on it, but we do it. You know we do. And this process continues bravely until we are old and feeble.

Yes, Playboy presented women’s bodies for our regard. Yes, they were airbrushed and photo shopped to perfection. Not a blemish, not a zit, not one single chewed fingernail. This process of perfection doesn’t deny nature, it reflects it. When we meditate on the partner of our dreams, the mental image we summon is without flaw. We don’t dwell upon a pimple or a bad tooth or a little underarm fat. We meditate on the gestalt. We meditate on being accepted and loved by that wonderful person.

Pam And The Sweater Puppies Save The World

As quoted in the Long Island Press:

“I am delighted and honored that my breasts and I were able to play a role in helping this freedom fighter achieve so many of his goals.”

— Pamela Anderson on Hugh Hefner

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Playboy Versus Kink.com?

There’s a long and pedestrian business article here about the decline of the Playboy empire and the signs (faint though they are) that Hugh Hefner may finally, at age 83, be tired of maintaining his playboy image. But what struck me was the abject cluelessness of the last three paragraphs, two of which (after subtracting a paragraph of standard-story boilerplate filler) propose Kink.com’s Peter Acworth as the next “Mr. Playboy”:

But if Hefner sells up, who might take his place as Mr Playboy? The leading contender is Midlands-born Peter Acworth, a former Barings banker and founded of Kink.com, a suite of S&M and bondage-themed websites.

Acworth, 39, says he got the idea after he read in a British tabloid about a fireman who sold pornographic pictures on the internet. “He had made a quarter of a million pounds over a short period doing nothing very clever at all. So I basically just ripped off that idea.”

It’s a long way from bunny ears; Kink.com’s brand icon is a forked tail.

On the one hand, it’s illuminating that Kink.com should be considered one of the strongest brands in porn, that it could be compared to Playboy in any fashion. But this business writer — although clear on the meaning of the Playboy brand — has obviously failed to grasp the central branding connotations that have made Kink.com what it is today. Playboy has always had an iconic individual (Hefner) living it up with the models, with a wink and a nudge as to the propriety of same. (To be fair, Playboy’s photographers have a reputation for running clean and professional shoots.) But Kink.com is known for being holier than the Pope when it comes to professionalism and clean dealing with its models. It needs this reputation because of the edgy nature of its kinky material. Trying to cast Acworth in a Hefnerian role — something he’s shown no sign of wanting — would be an epic disaster for the brand.

It’s probably true that we’ll see Acworth, along with a rich cast of his dominant hirelings, being waited on hand and foot by naked slaves once the forthcoming reality-show site The Upper Floor (think Roissy meets Real World) goes live on the top floor of his San Francisco Armory castle of kink. But for Hefner-level striving-after-celebrity, he’d need to pull up at the Erotic Exotic Ball in a carriage pulled by a dozen prancing pony girls, and I don’t think we’ll see him going there.

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