Site Meter Reflections on Playboy: <i>Bitch</i> magazine tells of a preteen lesbian’s first <i>Playboy</i>

September 21, 2006

Bitch magazine tells of a preteen lesbian’s first Playboy

To say the least, feminist literature hasn’t always had a kind word for Playboy. But in issue 33 of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, currently on newsstands, publisher Debbie Rasmussen thanks it for her discovery of her lesbianism in a brief memoir on the bottom half of page 72. Left alone in the house one night at age 10, she rummages through her parents’ dresser and finds one issue of Playboy. The nude women get her “excited in a way I’d never felt before.” She then endeavors to talk her friends out of their clothes by staging make-believe Playboy photo sessions—which proves surprisingly easy.

“It feels odd now to credit Playboy—that icon of constructed, commercialized, cleaned-up sexuality—with one of my favorite discoveries: that I liked girls,” says Rasmussen. I could have told her that affectation and commerce don’t make sexuality any less human; they’re simply part of the dance. The better that feminism understands this, the more sexually liberating it can be.

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 9:34 AM

  • Blogger lilfunky1 left this comment at September 22, 2006 6:45 AM  
    The fact that Playboy has been so commercialized and readily available means it probably has done the same for many young females.

    Personally I've never seen playboy, but other male-oriented magazines and... let's face it. It's hot.

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at September 22, 2006 10:46 AM  
    lilfunky1,
    Regardless of sexual orientation, women have an eye for women.

  • Blogger Queen of Spain left this comment at September 24, 2006 12:14 AM  
    Here Here !

  • Anonymous Anonymous left this comment at September 24, 2006 3:55 AM  
    That is true. Women have an eye for women. What do you think are the differences between the eye women have for other women and the eye men have for them?

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at September 24, 2006 12:42 PM  
    Queen of Spain,
    You’ve already said as much in a post on your own blog. I’ve just gotten around to updating my links to you. I apologize for not doing it sooner, Your Majesty.

    Anonymous,
    If I recall correctly, anthropologist Helen Fisher was interviewed for a TV program on “lookism.” She said that the heterosexual woman’s eye for women evolved to size up the competition. As I framed the matter in an earlier post, it’s Salieri and Mozart–type stuff.

    • Post a Comment

    « Home

    Create a Link