Site Meter Reflections on Playboy: The women of the <i>Playboy</i> Interview

December 12, 2007

The women of the Playboy Interview

When I learned that Tina Fey would be the capital-I Interviewee of the January 2008 Playboy, I smiled, remembering the Internet gossip I had traded with some guys a few years ago about how great a Fey pictorial would be. Her face will reportedly be naked, anyway—although I happen to agree with Charles Taylor of Salon [free archive; no paid subscription necessary] that spectacles can be beautiful on a woman.

The ratio of women to men in the Playboy Interview has been low. But the ethnic, professional, and political diversity of the Interview’s female subjects looks pretty good in comparison to that of its male subjects. If you see any errors or omissions in my list of women in the Playboy Interview, please let me know. I want it to be complete. I’ve provided Wikipedia links for only those names from outside the worlds of show business and sports. (Judgment call: for my purposes here today, literature and predominantly written journalism are outside of show business.)

If Playboy wants to capital-I Interview any more women in 2008, I nominate Judith Rich Harris, scientist and author of The Nurture Assumption and No Two Alike. Many political discussions need her wisdom desperately.

April 1963 — Helen Gurley Brown
March 1964 — Ayn Rand
October 1965 — Madalyn Murray (O’Hair)
January 1966 — Princess Grace of Monaco (i.e. Grace Kelly)
May 1968 — Virginia E. Johnson (with William Masters)
January 1970 — Raquel Welch
April 1970 — Mary Calderone
July 1970 — Joan Baez
January 1971 — Mae West
January 1972 — Germaine Greer
September 1972 — Bernadette Devlin (McAliskey)
April 1974 — Jane Fonda (with Tom Hayden)
March 1975 — Billie Jean King
September 1975 — Erica Jong
October 1975 — Cher
June 1976 — Sara Jane Moore
July 1976 — Lily Tomlin
May 1977 — Anne Beatts, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, Gilda Radner, Rosie Shuster (with the cast of Saturday Night Live)
October 1977 — Barbra Streisand
May 1978 — Anita Bryant
October 1978 — Dolly Parton
May 1979 — Wendy Carlos (formerly Walter Carlos)
November 1979 — Virginia E. Johnson (again, with William Masters)
April 1980 — Linda Ronstadt
January 1981 — Yoko Ono (with John Lennon)
May 1981 — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
November 1981 — Oriana Fallaci
March 1982 — Patricia Hearst
July 1982 — Bette Davis
December 1982 — Julie Andrews (with Blake Edwards)
October 1983 — Barbara Bosson, Veronica Hamel, Betty Thomas (with the cast of Hill Street Blues)
April 1984 — Joan Collins
September 1984 — Shirley MacLaine
December 1984 — Linda McCartney (with Paul McCartney)
January 1985 — Goldie Hawn
March 1985 — Diane Sawyer (with the cast of 60 Minutes)
January 1986 — Dr. Ruth Westheimer
March 1986 — Sally Field
May 1986 — Kathleen Turner
November 1986 — Joan Rivers
June 1987 — Whoopi Goldberg
August 1987 — Imelda Marcos (with Ferdinand Marcos)
December 1988 — Cher (again)
May 1989 — Susan Sarandon
December 1989 — Candice Bergen
June 1990 — Polly Draper, Mel Harris, Melanie Mayron, Patricia Wettig (with the cast of Thirtysomething)
November 1990 — Leona Helmsley
February 1992 — Liz Smith
September 1992 — Betty Friedan
October 1992 — Sister Souljah
December 1992 — Sharon Stone
March 1993 — Anne Rice
June 1993 — Roseanne Arnold (with Tom Arnold)
November 1993 — Joyce Carol Oates
May 1995 — Camille Paglia
June 1995 — Joycelyn Elders
September 1995 — Cindy Crawford
January 1997 — Whoopi Goldberg (again)
September 2000 — Jennifer Lopez
December 2000 — Drew Barrymore
October 2001 — Allison Janney, Janel Moloney (with the cast of The West Wing)
January 2003 — Halle Berry
July 2003 — Lisa Marie Presley
February 2005 — Nicole Kidman
November 2006 — Arianna Huffington
December 2006 — The Dixie Chicks
January 2008 — Tina Fey

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 9:21 AM

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