“Composer Artisan” ISFP. Socially and economically libertarian for reasons having nothing to do with Ayn Rand. Current fields of study:Playboy, A Course in Miracles, building a new life in Humboldt County.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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” has
influenced my impression of Playboy. (In case anyone wonders, my religious heritage is Lutheran on my father’s side and secularist on my mother’s.)
As devotees of free minds and free markets, we spend our nights pining for a major-party politician who not only looks dreamy while reading a Teleprompter but shows some passion for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.
“Why are Russian women so hot?” asks Radley Balko at my source for the above photo of beautiful Maria Sharapova, the libertarian blog Hit & Run. To answer his own question, Balko approvingly cites Anne Applebaum of Slate, who credits the collapse of communism and the opening of markets in the former Soviet Union.
As a libertarian, I’ve been falsely accused of admiring Ayn Rand. Her novels reportedly have some kinky sex in them, but even so, I haven’t been motivated to read them after reading her March 1964 Playboy Interview (complete transcript; paid subscription required). Her assertion that “man does not possess any instincts” and her belief in “Objectivism” as a viewpoint structurally incapable of turning into fanatical dogma tell me that her view of human nature isn’t refined enough to merit serious study. As an alternative, I recommend a careful reading of the libertarian implications of Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.
I don’t necessarily speak of libertarian literature in general, but Reason has been sexing up its act for a while. More power to it, I say. Playboy and Reason are two magazines that can benefit mutually from a willingness to resemble each other a bit from time to time.
This student at Louisiana State University is pictured much more candidly on page 112 of the October Playboy, for its “Girls of the Southeastern [Athletic] Conference” pictorial. In her shot for the current issue, I see self-confident good taste. It’s a cliché to call Playboy’s nudes “tasteful,” but I choose my written words with care.
Virtually every image Playboy has ever published is less shocking and disgusting than some other representation of the naked female form that most men and women could easily imagine (or even create and have displayed in an art gallery somewhere). Playboy Enterprises’ workshops of model recruitment, photography, and photo editing work so consistently well that tastefulness is embarrassingly consistent in the product. (Even so, the allegedly ruthless corporate machine frightens away women whose hearts aren’t really set on it.) Embarrassingly, I say, because some seem to think that Playboy must earn its status as art rather than mere entertainment by shocking the bourgeoisie. But my political tribe, libertarianism, begs to differ. We’ve been building a consensus that “art” and “entertainment” are interchangeable terms. Like McDonald’s, Starbucks, and to a lesser extent, professional sports, Playboy may be a victim of its own success in bringing sensual pleasures to the masses within reliable—but perhaps aging—perimeters of good taste. Since sports seems to be the least hated of the four institutions by those who would dismiss Playboy centerfolds as kitsch, I’ll try to explain Terri Lynn Farrow as something like a Joe DiMaggio or Muhammad Ali: one who can express beautiful individuality through a medium of mass entertainment with conventions and clichés already familiar to millions through decades of exposure. Whatever the medium under discussion, not everyone can do that!
To follow my argument completely, you’ll need a paid subscription to the Playboy Cyber Club. That link is not work-safe, of course, and neither are many that follow in this post. I first noticed her in the fall 2001 College Girls newsstand special. But later on, I was thrilled to find six minutes of video of her tryout for the New Orleans “Casting Call” (QuickTime, RealVideo). This woman is charming, quirky, polite, daring, and gritty. Unless you hold to the rigid formulas of some (not all) feminists for how a self-respecting woman behaves toward men, you’ll notice this combination of traits, remember it, and love it. She satisfies almost every possible definition of all-American by claiming Swedish, German, French, Jewish, and African-American blood. The headshot in this post comes from her January 27, 2003, Cyber Girl of the Week gig. But in light of the aesthetic choices she made in presenting her body again more recently, she deserves to go all the way to Playmate of the Month at least.
I don’t dislike breast implants for the sanctimonious reasons that some others do. If you can’t agree with me on this, please have the integrity to say “I hate saline!” instead of “I hate silicone!” The former compound deserves the blame for the balloon look of visual adult entertainment in the 1990s. The American silicone market was largely destroyed by pseudoscientific lawsuits that feminists, among others, widely supported out of moral panic. Those lawsuits arguably did more to restrict women’s individual choices than that Marxist demon of good intentions, Catharine MacKinnon, ever can.
But for purely aesthetic reasons, I want a greater variety of sizes and shapes of breasts on the centerfold proper. As it happens, Farrow impresses me by still not having implants of any kind—if the photo on newsstands now is a reliable indicator. The long hair that falls over her petite breasts is an obviously dyed, platinum shade of blond. The October 2007 Playboy won’t tell you this, but her modestly trimmed pubic hair is that darker shade of blond naturally, according to the video. Farrow must have figured that guys would notice the juxtaposition: hair dyed a nature-defying color over nature’s own breasts. In the twenty-first century, Farrow has something in common with the men who ogle her Playboy picture. She can have the complex, Rabelaisian pleasure of understanding the quirky nuances of her own sexual behavior in light of evolutionary psychology. Like the heliocentric astronomy of Copernicus and Galileo and the evolutionary biology of Darwin and Wallace, this paradigm shift frightens and disturbs even as it opens up new possibilities for dialogue on perennial human issues like entertainment and the arts.
If Farrow can be anybody’s muse in any such indirect manner (with all due modesty!), she deserves a centerfold.
No major “Bollywood” production from India’s feature film industry will be freeze-framed in Playboy’s annual “Sex in Cinema” pictorial for some time yet. Only a few years ago have the gorgeous male and female leads in these elaborate song-and-dance melodramas been allowed to kiss on screen for the first time since the nation’s independence (60 years ago tomorrow). But I still think that the 2001 blockbuster Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India could be a hit at one of Hugh Hefner’s movie parties.
Bollywood style is sometimes said to parallel the musical extravaganzas of American cinema of the 1930s, part of the cultural environment of Hefner’s childhood. The music itself sounds vastly different, but anyone who can learn to enjoy the Beatles’ tribute to Indian music from Sgt. Pepper’s can love the crowd-pleasing tunes of the best of Bollywood. Lagaan takes place in a remote district of British-occupied India in 1893. Indian farmers are threatened with hunger because of drought and the lagaan (Hindi for land tax) they have to pay every year: a portion of their harvest to the British government. Naturally, Indian audiences love to hate the smug, vicious colonial racism of the tax-collecting villain, Captain Russell. Audiences from every country on earth will cheerfully boo and hiss along. The farmers notice that the game the Englishmen call cricket looks like a “boys’ game” native to India. Out of desperation, they goad Russell into betting the lagaan on the outcome of a cricket match between the Indians and the Englishmen. If the Indians lose, they pay triple. If they win, they pay nothing for three years.
This is not only an engaging sports movie but also a romance with remarkable sex appeal. Pay attention to the subtitles in the video clip below. Surely, the song’s Hindi lyrics describe part of the eternal game of human mating all over the world. Only a little grounding in Hinduism is needed: The occasion is the religious festival of the god Krishna’s birthday. In his reckless youth, Krishna is said to have had many pretty young cowherdesses, Gopis, as playmates. But the main goddess in his life is his consort, Radha. The rest will sound all too familiar.
2001 Playmate of the Year Brande Roderick is the leading lady in the recent Bollywood production Out of Control. But I can’t lie. Lagaan is a much better movie.
Extra-credit question: How much would you pay to see a Mel Brooks tribute to Bollywood?
...[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.
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.
The Miss Junes are the Boston Red Sox of Playboy. With Kara Monaco as the 2006 Playmate of the Year, they have finally broken the apparent curse keeping any of them from winning the title.
Monaco has simultaneously broken another curse. From 1964 to 2002, the PMOY was always the cover girl of her issue. But for the past three years, the woman in that month’s celebrity pictorial has gotten the cover instead. I’m happy to see Playboy rediscover one of its lost traditions with the June 2006 cover. At the time of writing, the home page[borderline work-safe] of the Playboy Mailing List at Yahoo! Groups is encouraging everyone to buy this issue at the newsstand, because “strong sales will send the message loud and clear” that the PMOY deserves the cover. Good advice.
From Reuters: “The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday upheld its proposed $550,000 fine against 20 CBS television stations for a stunt involving pop singer Janet Jackson briefly exposing her breast during the 2004 Super Bowl football game halftime show.”
Did all 20 of those stations conspire to tear Jackson’s blouse off? I doubt it. But since the FCC doesn’t operate under the American principles of free speech and free markets, we shouldn’t expect it to honor individual accountability, either.
Women can be seen as the victims of pornography in the same way as boxers are victimized. But how can they be cast as victims if they chose to participate? “No one held a gun to their heads and said ‘Do it,’” remains a facile ploy to avoid confronting the issue. Freedom of choice is illusion. How many working-class men would choose boxing in a world of truly free choices, in which they might just as easily become brain surgeons? And how many working-class women would choose to be pornographic film stars, or prostitutes, if they could just as easily become Supreme Court justices? (That’s why it is always big news when an upper-class woman is “discovered” to have a double life as a porn star.)
—sociologist Michael S. Kimmel, in the essay collection Men Confront Pornography, edited by Kimmel, 1990, p. 314.
Kimmel assumes that almost anyone would rather have a white-collar than a blue-collar job. Pardon me, but it seems inconsistent for a left-wing egalitarian to presume the natural superiority of the values and tastes of his own social class. Some men are too aggressive to enjoy being brain surgeons; boxing may suit them better. Some women have sensation-seeking personalities; they may be happier trading sex for money than writing judicial opinions. There are more varieties of human temperament, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Camille Paglia, in one of her columns for Salon.com, has a better explanation for the headline-making rarity of an upper-class woman’s involvement in porn: bourgeois social pressures limit her career options.
A gigantic, self-perpetuating school system is forcing students along a pre-professional track whether they want it or not. Perhaps as many as half the college students currently enrolled in the elite schools may not really want to be there but have just numbly followed along in the track of their parents’ and peers’ social expectations. They have no other options. If our pampered students have the best of all possible worlds, why are so many of them binge-drinking and anesthetizing themselves with brain-wrecking designer drugs?
...[T]here’s no way that the daughter of prosperous, successful, white upper-middle-class parents could decide to drop out of an Ivy League school in her sophomore year to get married and be a stay-at-home mom. She would be upbraided and shamed, accused of “wasting” her education and betraying her “real” talents—and embarrassing her status-conscious parents.
Similarly, it’s scarcely imaginable that the son of such a family could opt for the career of auto mechanic or trucker instead of physician, lawyer or businessman.
When left-wing academics express pity over sex workers’ lack of freedom of choice, it may be an example of what psychoanalysis calls projection.
This post was modified on November 13, 2005, at 11:17 a.m. The word odd was replaced by the word inconsistent.
This student at Louisiana State University is pictured much more candidly on page 112 of the October Playboy, for its “Girls of the Southeastern [Athletic] Conference” pictorial. In her shot for the current issue, I see self-confident good taste. It’s a cliché to call Playboy’s nudes “tasteful,” but I choose my written words with care.