Site Meter Reflections on Playboy: <i>Playboy</i> refuses to apologize for admiring youthfulness

May 4, 2007

Playboy refuses to apologize for admiring youthfulness

...[A]fter all of my complaining about recent playmates, 2006 has been an awesome year for them. Cassandra Lynn's perfect fakeness, Nicole Voss' old school beauty, Jordan Monroe's, Janine Habeck's & Sarah Elizabeth's 80's centerfold bodies (big real or realish boobs & hips!) Best year IMHO for a long time. One big "but" though, they kind of crossed the line with Sara Jean Underwood. Playboy isn't Barely Legal. Sara looks all of 13, if that. C'mon, she's posing with a teddy bear in one shot! Yes she's undeniably cute, but as my girlfriend said, she looks like a 12 year old Anna Kournikova.
—fellow blogger Robert Paulson, in a comment here

My friend is presumably disappointed by the news that Miss July 2006 has been crowned the 2007 Playmate of the Year. But if it’s not necessarily evil for me to admire 17-year-old Thora Birch’s breasts in American Beauty, then it’s not necessarily evil for me to admire the January 1958 Playboy centerfold of 16-year-old Elizabeth Ann Roberts (borderline work-safe: it’s not the centerfold itself). Underwood can’t help looking younger than 23 with her freckles, small stature, agreeably dainty physique, and fashionably hairless vulva. So what?

Having said that—and having suggested 14 as the legal age of majority—I think that Playboy Enterprises shows prudence, good taste, and compassion in setting 18 as the minimum age for its nude models. Adolescents of both sexes deserve some time to figure out their own sexuality before they make relatively irreversible decisions about it. But Underwood is now a wooomaaan, ba-bum-tshh, ba-bum-tshh.

By the way, the AP entertainment writer erroneously refers to some women as “former” Playmates. Would anyone call Muhammad Ali a former legend?

Update, 3:14 p.m.: Now is a good time to recommend Jacob Sullum’s review of Dian Hanson’s The History of Girly Magazines. It’s worth noting that a trouser-wearing hoochie mama of 1903 shocked and excited men by implying, in part, that “she was stepping outside her Heaven-ordained role as hand-maiden to man.” Every feminist wants women to have this prerogative, yet I would be surprised if I learned that the trouser models could count on more than lukewarm support from the bourgeois feminism of the day. Wouldn’t you?

Hanson mistakenly identifies “the very first pubic hair to appear on the American newsstand” as the work of Penthouse in 1970. Although Playboy’s centerfold proper showed it for the first time with Miss January 1971 (and 1972 PMOY) Liv Lindeland, a non-Playmate pictorial of Paula Kelly of Sweet Charity showed it in the August 1969 issue. But let’s not snicker at Sullum for not knowing that.

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 11:59 AM

  • Anonymous Anonymous left this comment at May 6, 2007 9:36 AM  
    Hey,

    I randomly stumbled upon your blog recently, and I really like it! I was wondering if you would be interested in a $50 blog contest I'm hosting over at http://www.thepiggybanker.com.
    The contest is locatd here: http://www.thepiggybanker.com/misc/50-blog-link-contest-thepiggybankercom/

    Thanks for reading, and keep up the great work-

    Best,

    Pbanker

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at May 6, 2007 12:51 PM  
    Pbanker,
    With respect, I decline to participate in the contest. But I’m glad you like my blog.

  • Blogger Robert Paulson left this comment at May 10, 2007 12:41 PM  
    Well, I guessed Underwood was going to be PMOY when I saw her on GND a while ago with new implants. The one positive feature she had was that she was all natural, well, no longer. Also, Underwood was in almost every episode of GND. That's got to count for something.

    So far in 2007, the best [of course IMHO] playmate has been Giuliana Marino, miss april. Jayde Nicole would be #1 in my book except for that tattoo of the word "respect" right above her cooch. Besides the sheer ugliness of it, trust me, I don't need a tatto to tell me how to behave when I am in the vicinity of the holiest of holies.

    • Post a Comment

    « Home

    Create a Link