Reflections on Playboy: Probably the only weepy chick flick that glamorizes <i>Playboy</i>

ANNUIT
COEPTIS

Brian Sorgatz
(rhymes with “cats”)
Arcata, Humboldt County, California, United States

What sort of man blogs about Playboy? I flatter myself to think that Kendra Wilkinson might call this blog intellectual pimping.

View my complete profile.

To see what I look like, click here.

ISFP “Composer Artisan.” Culturally and economically libertarian for reasons having nothing to do with Ayn Rand. The rabbit in the avatar is not mine. I stole the image from the House Rabbit Society home page. Favorite activities: reading, writing, crosswords, Jeopardy!, moviegoing, television (and proud of it), piano, didgeridoo, foreign languages (currently Spanish), light hiking, spiritual practice, friendship, sex.

Hollywood, California, is my spiritual hometown. I actually grew up in three other communities in California, but it hardly seems to matter which three. How could my heart take root anywhere under the tyranny of American public schooling?

I don’t have to work for a living. After my father died in December 1997, my family and I won a legal settlement.

RSS.XML Feed

Do you like Snap Shots? If not, select “Disable” from the CIRCULAR GEAR ICON of any Snap Shots pop-up window. To re-enable, follow this link to their site.

The Playboy Forum (official).
The Playboy Blogger by DigiHef.
Playboy Critic’s Corner.
The Blog About Nothing: Sudheer of Hyderabad, India, is a big fan of Playboy and an even bigger fan of Seinfeld. In this blog, he composes humorous dialogues for the show’s characters.
Confessions of a Female Misogynist: A Feminist Critique of My Personal Hypocrisy.
Eros Philia Agape: TerraPraeta seeks “the true nature of people, society and the world.”
Ethan Lee Vita: Philosopher and Writer. Ethan is a fellow libertarian.
Finding Salihah: the journal of a Muslim woman in Minneapolis.
The Gnooze: The G is silent. Marta Costello does a Jon Stewart–Stephen Colbert type of thing on the news of the day—and she’s prettier than either of those guys to boot. Watch her mention Reflections on Playboy in gratitude for my positive review.
Hit & Run: the official blog of my other favorite magazine, Reason: Free Minds and Free Markets; winner of the 2005 Weblog Award for Best Group Blog; “the best libertarian blog” according to the October 2005 issue of Playboy.
Islam vs. Liberty? On Islam and on Liberty.
Jamie Malanowski: by day, managing editor of Playboy; by night, a talented, intelligent novelist.
Jetting Through Life: “Jet” is loads of fun and she lives in Ohio.
Playboy model Terri Lynn Farrow at MySpace: in my opinion, a worthy candidate for Playmate.
Queen of Spain Blog: “tabloid mommy blogging at its best” according to the author.
Real-World Spirituality by Shantra: along with her husband, this blogger is a real-world friend as well as an Internet friend.
Scoobie Davis Online: a self-described “filmmaker, surfer, and party crasher” in southern California. He’s also a Playboy fan, a left-leaning political gadfly, and a connoisseur of Jack T. Chick religious tracts.
The Search for Health in Decadence: poetry and philosophical writings of Will, who has engaged me in lengthy, good-natured debate through comments on my blog.
South Side Of The 5: Robert Paulson is another Playboy aficionado.
Up the Tao Staircase: self-deprecating wit and wisdom from a Taoist perspective.

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker. With stylistic flair, a Harvard cognitive scientist refutes myths about human nature underlying a multitude of political beliefs—including many of those that would either favor or oppose the sexual revolution.
Trash Culture: Popular Culture and the Great Tradition by Richard Keller Simon. Professor Simon makes an impressive case for the essential similarity of “high” and “low” culture. The chapter on Playboy is thoughtful and valuable.
The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness by Virginia Postrel. There is nothing inherently shallow or frivolous about spending time and money on beauty in one’s environment, possessions, or body.
God in Popular Culture by Andrew M. Greeley. A liberal Catholic priest sees quasi-Christian messages of grace abounding in the allegedly soulless realm of commercial pop culture. For all I know, Greeley is not necessarily a Playboy fan. But his interpretation of Madonna’s song “Like a Virgin”—more plausible than the interpretation in Reservoir Dogs—has influenced my impression of Playboy. (In case anyone wonders, my religious heritage is German-Hungarian Lutheran on my father’s side and Anglo-Scots-Irish secularist on my mother’s.)
We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy—And the World’s Getting Worse by James Hillman and Michael Ventura. I reject the left-wing gloom that inspired the title—I think the world is generally getting better—but this book is a gold mine of exciting new ideas about whatever it is we call mental health.
The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education by Grace Llewellyn. She trusts Jean-Jacques Rousseau more than she should, but she has the right idea about America’s tyrannical public schools.
The Soul of Sex: Cultivating Life as an Act of Love by Thomas Moore. With his remarkably nuanced and unprejudiced mind, Moore ponders human sexuality as an expression of soul.

September 26, 2006

Probably the only weepy chick flick that glamorizes Playboy

The Los Angeles Times reviewer was astonished that the script for the 1991 made-for-TV movie Posing: Inspired by Three Real Stories “is credited to two women, Cathleen Young and Ann Donahue, so go figure and go hoot.” It tells the separate stories of three women—a wife and mother in a small Bible Belt town, a successful stockbroker with lingering insecurity from her days as an overweight teen, and a repressed Yale student who secretly envies her twin sister’s freedom—who make the improbable but understandable choice to pose nude for Playboy. Unlike the Times reviewer, I find the writing credits and subtitle of this bittersweet, mostly realistic drama easy to believe. The VHS version, titled I Posed for Playboy, includes footage of a topless photo shoot of Miss October 1990, Brittany York, but don’t expect any Playboy-type erotica besides that. A sensitive male who hasn’t been whipped by politically correct bourgeois feminism, however, may find subtle eroticism in the courage and integrity the women show before, during, and especially after their photo sessions. “All three do face unforeseen negative consequences in the wake of their respective issues hitting the stands,” says the review, “but only in the form of flak from self-righteous hypocrites at work and home.” In context, the sarcastic “but only” reveals the same twisted logic as in the drug-war propaganda reminding us that marijuana is not “harmless” because it can get us arrested. Well, whose fault is that, assholes?

I don’t know much about the video business, but the videocassette seems to be priced only for sale to video rental firms. I wish it weren’t so, because this movie, besides Amadeus, is the one that I wish every one of my readers would see. By the way, the dark-haired photographer in it, David Mecey, was an actual Playboy photographer at the time of filming.

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 5:24 PM

Brian Sorgatz left this comment at September 26, 2006 7:59 PM
In the two and a half hours or so since I first published this post, I’ve made several minor revisions for clarity.

« Home

<$BlogBacklinkTitle$>: <$BlogBacklinkSnippet$>
posted by <$BlogBacklinkAuthor$> @ <$BlogBacklinkDateTime$>