Site Meter Reflections on Playboy: In 2006, <i>Playboy</i> is still revolutionary

January 21, 2006

In 2006, Playboy is still revolutionary

In the March 10, 1991, issue of The New York Times, columnist Anna Quindlen pronounced Playboy dead as a symbol of sexual revolution. She had brought the latest issue of “the whoopie cushion of periodicals” (Hiss! Boo!) into the NYT office, where she and her coworkers mocked its supposed outdatedness. “Miss April’s big turnoff is ‘people who don’t smile,’ which seems a little 1959 in the age of global warming and AIDS,” Quindlen snorted, as if people in the '50s had nothing to worry about. “Shock to the system: the sex bomb of my childhood is deeply irrelevant.”

Quindlen should have been reading her own newspaper more diligently over the previous month. In its national edition of February 11, 1991, the whoopie cushion of record reported that a 52-year-old convenience store clerk in Miramar, Florida, had been arrested for selling a Playboy to a pair of 16-year-old boys. She was charged with distributing obscene material to minors, strip-searched, and forced to spend the night in jail. The charge was soon dropped for lack of evidence. Another source says that, after posting her bail, her husband opened the store and was robbed at gunpoint. Where were the police then?

The day I stop being teased about whether I actually read the articles is the day I’ll worry about Playboy’s continuing relevance. Until then, Hugh Hefner’s efforts to publish visual erotica and high-quality articles and fiction in the same place will be avant-garde. In this way, he is more radical than, say, Larry Flynt, who does not have such daring aspirations to middle-class respectability. Bourgeois culture is morally complex, both good and bad; Playboy’s rebellion against it is appropriately measured—and therefore paradoxically bolder.

Quindlen just doesn’t get it. She fails to appreciate the graceful bravado of those who posed for the “Women of the Women’s Colleges” pictorial. “Women who want to prove that it’s possible to be [both] attractive and intelligent get a good haircut and go to medical school.” Yawn. Does this woman realize just how square she sounds? Whether she knows it or not, this pseudoliberal bourgeoise has been thoroughly épatée-d.

But after more than fifty years of continuous publication, why hasn’t Playboy acquired full respectability by now? In her 2005 book Pornified, Pamela Paul argues that pornography (which, for her, includes Playboy) cannot be truly sexually liberating, or else
there would be little that is outré or taboo about it all. Hypocrisy and guilt still dominate sexuality in many ways, and pornography isn’t the cure for Puritanism or the sign of its defeat—it’s an emblem of its ongoing power to isolate and stigmatize sex. A truly liberated society would be one in which there were no need to “rebel” via commercialized images of sex. (p. 247)
I’m convinced that puritanism will never die out completely, because much of it is in our genes. So far, the sexual revolution has been heavily influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s doctrine of the Noble Savage, in which everything that troubles the human conscience is blamed on faulty social conditioning. Individuals see no need to confront their inner prude. Instead, they blame sexual repression entirely on some institution or other: perhaps organized religion, capitalism, or pornography, depending on their prejudices. But in my opinion, we should graciously accept some degree of anxiety and awkwardness about sexuality as part of the human condition. (If you have problems with my assumptions about human nature or my account of Rousseau’s legacy, I invite you to have a look at Steven Pinker’s book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.)

The sexual revolution can never be finally won. Playboy is deeply relevant, and may be for a long time yet.

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 3:41 PM

  • Blogger Jetting Through Life left this comment at January 21, 2006 7:26 PM  
    You didn't change anything on your new domain!! BORING!! LOL!

    I'd imagine that Playboy is still revolutionary... Wonder what's going to happen after Hef dies of using too much Viagra!!

    XXOO,
    JTL

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at January 23, 2006 11:10 AM  
    JTL,

    Yes, I did. I got rid of the Blogger NavBar at the top of the page. That’s one of the privileges of publishing at my own domain.

    Do you know of any Blogger-compatible templates that would suit the theme of my blog? I’m open to suggestions.

    When Hef dies, it’ll be like Weekend at Bernie’s. Two of his houseguests will drag his corpse around to convince everybody he’s still alive. By the way, that movie inspired a memorable pictorial [not work-safe].

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at October 14, 2006 10:44 AM  
    JTL’s complaint and my response are both outdated now.

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