Site Meter Reflections on Playboy: <i>Playboy</i> is all the cooler for being old

March 20, 2006

Playboy is all the cooler for being old

We knew Alicia [Rickter] was special: A Playboy historian discovered that Miss October 1995 is the 500th Playmate. “I’m amazed,” she says on hearing the news. “I am honored to join a group of women that starts with Marilyn Monroe and leads directly to me.”
Playboy, October 1995, p. 104.

As this is my 50th post, I’m thinking about the fact that Playboy is more than 50 years old. Most Americans of my generation and younger (I’ll be 34 late next month), if they think about it at all, seem to believe that the magazine’s long institutional life gives it an air of kitschy nostalgia. But for me, its longevity is an aesthetic strength, not a weakness, granting a kind of dignity and splendor.

The quotation above demonstrates Playboy’s well-justified tendency towards retrospection. If you’re not too proud to let commercial culture affect you emotionally, you may share some of Rickter’s wonder and amazement at discovering herself to be the heiress to Marilyn’s throne. It’s a quasi-royalistic sensibility that surely explains much of the popularity of Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. Science fiction author David Brin has made fascinating arguments (respectively here and here) that each of these epics conveys a somewhat dangerous anti-democratic message. But I have more faith than Brin in most people’s ability to hold contradictory notions simultaneously. Even after learning that the Wizard of Oz is just a little man behind a curtain, we may well choose to reap the subtle psychic rewards of bowing before him anyway—and we can do it without sacrificing our healthy skepticism and sense of irony. It poses no inherent threat to progress, and it’s fun.

A related subsequent post:
What are you saying, Miss November 2004?

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 1:21 PM

  • Blogger Queen of Spain left this comment at March 21, 2006 4:22 PM  
    Not only do I understand, but I totally agree. (grin)
  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at March 21, 2006 8:25 PM  
    Queen of Spain,
    Of course you do, being royalty yourself.
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