Rabbit at Rot
by Joseph C. Krupnick
This has been an epochal year for national disasters. The country remains inexorably locked in the claws of a war it had no reason to start; the media have been ruptured by the illegal leaking of a CIA agent; baseball is losing its vaunted status as national pastime to the steroid scandal; and, most recently, we have Hurricane Katrina. Yet, there is a silver lining in the season of the witches. This year happens also to commemorate the 50th anniversary of
Playboy. Inspired by a half-century of lacey pictures and provocative articles, Playboy released a
beautiful, glossy-paged summary volume that we can all relish in times of peril. The title is simply,
"The Playboy Book," and for $40 — if you're not too ashamed — you can pick one up.
"The Playboy Book" is about as exciting as it is provocative. It features 50 years of naked centerfolds,
glamour queens and political and literary discussions that have graced the pages of Playboy. A cursory
look at the articles shows that there may have been a time when we actually "bought it for the articles."
Indeed, "The Playboy Book" is illustrative not only of the evolution of the naked body but the changing
tenor of sexual attitudes in America. Examining the book we observe nothing but deterioration in the health
and vitality of the magazine that used to pride itself on catering to "gentlemen."
But for the economy, the 1970s were a great time to be alive in America. The Vietnam War was drawing to a
close, Foucault was still alive, Pink Floyd was experimenting with new rhythms, and Playboy was a real
magazine. Hef's women didn't look like whorish porn stars; they were natural, unadorned
"girls next door" who just happened to have huge breasts and hourglass figures. They were not enhanced by
airbrushing and limb implants; nor did they obsessively sport bikini waxes and fake tans. They were
appreciably more beautiful than today's Playboy women because they were smart, comfortable with their own
bodies, and actually possessed ambitions beyond being Anna Nicole Smith's sidekick on the newest reality
show.
A glance at the "Data Sheets" for the 1970s centerfolds shows that they include PhDs (Jean Manson,
August 1974), daughters of ambassadors and literati (Barbara Carrera, February 1972), professionals
(Cyndi Wood, February 1972), and readers of "A Tale of Two Cities," "The Stranger," "Brave New World"
and Shakespeare. One 1970s playmate has a documented IQ of 142, two went to UCLA and one studied with
Lee Strasberg. All of this ironically in the era of Betty Friedan's "Feminine Mystique" and before the
women's liberation movement really took hold.
Now, consider today's Playmates, who are mostly anorexic Eastern European 'tweens or bleach-blond
boob-jobbed high-school dropouts. Imagine Pam Anderson or Jenny McCarthy — two of the most successful
of the '90s playmates — reading Shakespeare. They're more likely to skim the latest Danielle Steele novel,
or, if they're really bright, "The Da Vinci Code." I had occasion to meet January 2004 Playmate
Colleen Shannon, and I'm not sure she could read at all.
Sophistication has almost completely vacated the centerfold pictures in Playboy, but it has also vanished
from the rest of the magazine. In the 1960s and '70s, well-respected women posed naked for the magazine
— women like Jane Fonda, Sophia Lauren, Jayne Mansfield, Vanessa Redgave and Brigitte Bardot. In
the 1990s and 2000s, we are more likely to see such women as WWE wrestler Chyna and big, buffed, bland Jessica
Canseco (on the cover of the current issue). Occasionally, big-name actresses have insinuated their way
into the magazine, like Drew Barrymore and Daryl Hannah, but they do not render completely nude photos,
nor are they ever in the same ballpark of respectability as Sophia Lauren. Serious actresses would never
pose today for the same reason that the whole squad from Baywatch does pose: while Playboy used to render
an artistic image of American beauty, now it's pure smut. Yesterday's women looked like Botticelli's goddesses,
posing in seductive yet tasteful positions, making even the famous 1972 orgy scene somehow look classy.
Today's Playboy women, with their eight-inch heels and pounds of lipstick, look like the hookers who
hover over cars at 3 a.m. on Miami Beach.
Still, the crux of the decline in the magazine's standards is taking place in the writing itself. People
used to buy Playboy for the same reason they bought the Atlantic and the New Yorker — for the
scintillating social commentary and imaginative literature.
In the '50s, '60s and '70s, some of the most original social commentary and fiction came out of Hugh Hefner's mag.
On page 50 we might see a nude pictorial of Raquel Welch, and on 51 a column by John Kenneth
Galbraith, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Gary Wills or David Halberstam. Meanwhile, America's most brilliant
men and women of letters, such as John Cheever and Norman Mailer published original works of fiction in
Playboy. The premise for "All the President's Men," "The Hustler" and "Roots" all got their start in
Playboy. Today's articles are slipshod, sexually-charged and usually written by a no-name pervert who
probably couldn't get a job at Maxim. And while Playboy used to interview such influential politicians as
Martin Luther King Jr. and
Pat Moynihan, the most distinguished interviews of the past five years have
been Dale Earnhart Jr., Jay-Z and
Thomas Friedman (though Playboy did — shockingly — snag the
Coen Brothers in 2001).
How in God's name do we account
for the 20-year transmogrification of Playboy from sophisticated to
smut, from the New Yorker to Jugs? The best argument is the sea-change that has occurred in America
over the ethics of sex. In the 1970s sex was fun, natural, and part of the everyday discourse, whether in
four-star movies or at she-she cocktail parties. Today, it has been relegated to the barnyard of reality
TV, Cinemax and online porn. It may be all over lowbrow TV, but sex has simply disappeared from respectable
discussion, leaving us with nowhere to find cleavage but the seediest of places. AIDS, the abortion debate,
the Moral Majority and the iron-fists of right-wing fundamentalists force this upon us. And the stigma of
sex precludes distinguished people like Galbraith and Mailer from writing for Playboy, or even having
anything to do with nudity. It discourages classy and more beautiful actresses like Angelina Jolie and
Catherine Zeta-Jones from posing. The result is that Hef is left with only the curs and whelps shameless
enough to spread their legs for a beleaguered industry consumed by smut peddlers.
Observing the absence
of good writing and forced to gaze upon the dregs of the female sex, the self-respecting man now feels
ashamed to buy Playboy, an outcast in a civilized world. We no longer have the excuse that we are reading
Playboy for the articles. And when we buy it,
we smile sheepishly at the cashier, run home and hide it under the bed, hoping the cleaning lady won't
find it. It's too bad, given that sex is always going to be at the top of a man's mind — whether he's
John Kennedy or John Holmes. But today we have no choice but to read Playboy beneath the covers, dreaming
of a return to the '70s.
E-mail Joseph C. Krupnick at joekrupnick at gmail dot com.
