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Coronavirus got the better of Playboy magazine: the end of a myth

2020-05-22T05:26:00.959Z


THE PARISIAN WEEKEND. Sulfurous review, Playboy has ceased to be on newsstands in the United States, defeated by the crisis of the paper press and


Chicago, November 1953. A young man rummages through the piles of newspapers at a newsstand. Discreetly, he grabs a magazine to place it on the front, ready to catch the eye of the barge. The cover displays a photo of the famous actress Marilyn Monroe. The title, Playboy. The price, 50 cents (the equivalent of 4.50 euros today). He was the editor, but he did not dare to put his name, Hugh Hefner. This is the first issue, and perhaps the last.

This magazine was entirely designed on the kitchen table of his small apartment. Hefner and Art Paul, a graphic designer called in reinforcement a few weeks earlier, patiently assembled the model of these 90 pages by hand - paper, glue, scissors, typewriter -, before sending it to the printing press. Budget, $ 8,000. Hugh borrowed from relatives. His mother secretly gave him a check for $ 1,000, while his father did not believe in his project, "amateur work", according to him. And yet, will be surprised Art Paul years later, "this first issue already contained everything that the monthly would become later".

Nearly seventy years later, Playboy, which became quarterly in 2019, has just turned a page in its history. Its last printed issue was released in the United States on March 16. But the brand still occupies a special place in the collective imagination. Derivatives bring in almost a billion euros each year, its online video platform has crossed one million subscribers, and the magazine remains published on the Internet. Mirror of American society, this cult magazine which accompanied the revolution of manners has become famous all over the world.

A phenomenal success from the start

For its first issue, in 1953, the magazine displayed Marilyn Monroe on the front page. This is the only number where the famous rabbit logo does not appear./Sipa/Wenn  

The first issue of Playboy sells 54,000 copies! Unheard of for a magazine creation. If the buyers rushed, it is not because Marilyn is making the headlines, but because she is naked, "for the first time", in the center page. Hugh Hefner couldn't afford a model, so for weeks he tracked down a photo that many have heard of but very few have seen: Marilyn Monroe on red velvet. At the start of her career, the actress reluctantly agreed to be immortalized in the simplest device in front of a purple curtain.

The famous nude photo of Marilyn Monroe that Hugh Hefner negotiated for the first issue of "Playboy" ./ Sipa / Valérie Macon  

For a few hundred dollars, the editor of Playboy negotiated this exclusivity. Marilyn served as bait but her magazine does not intend to sell stars. On the contrary. Like all of his fellow citizens, Hugh Hefner has heard of the Kinsey report. Published in two parts, in 1948 and 1953, this large-scale sociological survey on the sexual practices of Americans caused an electric shock. Nearly 8,000 men and as many women, from all walks of life, were interviewed thoroughly and anonymously. And what they say does not at all match the standards in force.

The "playmate", instrument of sexual liberation

Blowjobs, masturbation, adultery turn out to be commonplace practices, whereas they are, at best taboo, at worst liable to prison in certain states. “We lived like hypocrites and it caused a lot of suffering. Dr. Kinsey's research had a huge impact on me, it was like the arrival of the cavalry, ”said Hugh Hefner. Unemployed designer and journalist, the latter will “draw inspiration from this investigation, explains historian Steven Watts, author of the book Mr. Playboy , to imagine a magazine centered on a key idea: proclaim the end of shame and live happily his sexuality ”.

The instrument of this sexual liberation is called the "playmate" (playmate, in English). Heiress of the pin-up, it is the Hollywood anti-star. Playboy opens his pages to the seller of the local grocery store, to the neighbor next door. He alerts his readers: "Playmates are everywhere! For the photo sessions, the owner's instructions are strict: no studio, the model is photographed "in its natural environment".

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Sunday handyman, telephone operator with glasses or tassel with pompom, she shows her breasts but not her nipples, her behind but not her front. And the magazine gets caught up. In 1955, the elected representative of the month of July was none other than an employee of the magazine's subscription service. Janet Pilgrim shows her buttocks to over 500,000 readers. The following year, the publication passed the million mark. Playmate is one of the trademarks of Playboy.

A rabbit as a logo

"The magazine owes its success to me as much as it does to me," said Hugh Hefner of Art Paul. In 1953, Hefner recruited this unknown illustrator, whose talent stunned him. The influence of whoever becomes its artistic director is decisive. He will break the rules of the magazine press, use the art of collage, play hide and seek with the reader. Art Paul has the idea of ​​hiding the "bunny", the little rabbit with the bow tie, on the cover of each Playboy. In a lock of hair, behind a letter, in the reflection of an eye ...

This emblem, Hugh Hefner wanted it from the second issue. "A symbol that people can immediately associate with the magazine," he explains to Art Paul. In less than an hour, the designer traces the famous rabbit. Since 1953, it has not changed an inch. Along with those of Nike and Apple, it is one of the most famous logos in the world. According to an advertising agency, 97% of people are able to identify it. The rabbit, laughed Hugh Hefner, "he is the playboy of the animal world". As for its human version, its creator conceptualized it, like the playmate.

Hugh Hefner in New York, in 2003./REA/Vincent Laforet  

Dressed in silk pajamas, the male Playboy listens to music, prepares a cocktail for two, discusses sex and politics. He is single and belongs to the emerging middle class, in a very prosperous post-war America. "Playboy was at the heart of the consumer boom of the 1950s," observes Steven Watts. You shouldn't follow fashions, Hefner insists with his colleagues, but launch them. »Yes to credit card, yes to hi-fi. No to treatments for baldness and lower back belts.

"Hefner rejects all advertising that could degrade the image he is trying to impose," analyzes the historian. That of a new man. While the male press celebrates the heightened virility - rodeo and bear hunting -, the monthly stands out. For Dian Hanson, legendary editor of erotic books, notably at Taschen, "Playboy has proven that you don't have to be a bully to please women, and that skinny nerds can seduce too".

The “bunny”, incarnation of the woman-object

However, voices are raised to denounce a new form of hypocrisy. "Playboy magazine released the man but it did it at the expense of the woman," observes historian Elizabeth Fraterrigo.

In 1963, journalist Gloria Steinem was hired, under a pseudonym, at the Playboy club in New York. The first of these night establishments, which opened three years earlier in Chicago, has 250,000 members. Soon, there will be around fifty franchises all over the country and dozens abroad. A huge success due to the low price of membership, only 25 dollars per year. And, above all, the presence of the famous "bunnies", hostesses and waitresses.

Dressed, for the most part, in a bustier, a pair of ears and a rabbit tail, "they were a real magnet for attracting battalions of men", according to Steven Watts. Gloria Steinem's investigation, published in an American magazine, is scandalous. It depicts the back of the decor. The extended hours for a meager salary, the system of fines which punishes girls for spun tights, neglected make-up ... As well as the continuous flow of gravelly proposals. The “bunny” becomes the embodiment of the woman-object. In a memorable television debate, a feminist calls out to Hugh Hefner: "When he walks around with a rabbit tail glued to his buttocks, we can talk about equality!" The editor remains speechless.

GIs subscribe during the Vietnam War

But nothing can stop Playboy from expanding its influence. The Vietnam War gave him an extraordinary showcase. In 1965, without believing too much, a regiment paid its dues to pay for the famous "lifetime subscription". The offer promises to "get the first issue delivered by one of (our) bunnies". Hugh Hefner decides to send the playmate of the year, Jo Collins, to the GIs. Welcomed like the messiah, she discovers the rooms with walls lined with photos from the magazine, and visits the wounded in the hospital. The event made the headlines. Hefner, opposed to the conflict, opens his pages to the debate that shakes America and publishes letters from soldiers. "Playboy is the magazine of the Vietnam War," decrees the Washington Post.

The monthly is emerging as a laboratory of ideas, committed to the right to abortion, present alongside homosexuals, or even activist for civil rights with the victims of racial segregation. Jennifer Jackson was the first black playmate in history in March 1965, while club regulations specified that entry of people of color was "prohibited".

Art Paul can now bring in any artist to illustrate the magazine. Whether his name is Andy Warhol or Salvador Dali. Great writers - John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac, Vladimir Nabokov, among others - entrust their texts to the literary pages. And the monthly publishes river interviews which finish building its reputation. Martin Luther King will give the longest interview of his career there. The democratic candidate Jimmy Carter will indulge in a few confidences, shortly before being elected president of the United States, in 1976: "In my life, I wanted many women and, in my head, I very often committed adultery, "he said. It's a scandal and it's in Playboy!

Playboy also played in the political court when Jimmy Carter, in the middle of the presidential campaign, confided in it in 1976./DR  

During the 1970s, the company went public. The monthly magazine sells more than 7 million copies, it is available in around thirty countries, including France since 1973. But, in the shadow of Lui magazine, this French version will never really take off. Her most memorable issue, in April 1987, featured a Pierrette Le Pen, buttocks in the air and disguised as a maid, while her husband Jean-Marie (whom she is divorcing) is running for president. 1988.

"Death of a playmate"

Hugh Hefner and playmate Dorothy Stratten, who will be found dead on August 14, 1980./Frank Edwards / Getty  

Playboy also faces competition. His most serious rival, the British Penthouse, pushed him to his limits during the aptly named "war of the hairs". Faced with the very explicit content of Penthouse, Playboy attempted a “porn” turn… before retracting. "We are lost, it is time to recover," confesses Hugh Hefner. Far from imagining that the magazine's golden age is over. And that the 1980s will start in the blood.

"Death of a playmate" traces the tragic sequence that led to the assassination of Dorothy Stratten. The article, signed Teresa Carpenter, is published in the New York weekly The Village Voice. After having just been named playmate of the year 1980, Dorothy Stratten obtains a role alongside Audrey Hepburn in the new film by director Peter Bogdanovich. During the filming, she has an affair with the latter, when she has just married another man.

On August 14, 1980, she was found dead, shot in the head. The young woman was raped. Next to her, the body of her husband, who committed suicide. Beyond the news, the story of Teresa Carpenter demonstrates the responsibility of the "Playboy organization", accused of having failed to protect its new star. Saleswoman in a fast-food restaurant a year earlier, Dorothy Stratten had entrusted her destiny to Hefner, "too happy to have found in her a chance to finally set foot in Hollywood", according to the journalist. Many newspapers will blame "the big machine for exploiting women," says Steven Watts in his book. "It is time for someone to take a closer look at what is going on behind the glamor of this empire," claims a Los Angeles daily.

A wave of puritanism overthrows the empire

Playboy will never really recover from the Stratten affair, especially since the AIDS epidemic and the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 led to a wave of unprecedented conservatism. In May 1985, the magazine became the target of an official commission on pornography. According to Steven Watts, "it's Reagan's entourage who acts behind the scenes." Points of sale are threatened with prosecution if they persist in distributing the magazine. Nearly 10,000 kiosks will apply censorship. The partiality of the commission will not survive the magazine's legal counterattack, which will regain its freedom. But the damage is done.

Sales are collapsing - readers are deserting by the millions - and will never go up again. "The party is over," headlines the weekly Newsweek in August 1986, when Hugh Hefner is recovering from a brain hemorrhage. It was his daughter, Christie, who took over the management of the group, threatened with bankruptcy. Radical decision, the clubs close their doors. If the monthly continues to be talked about - Pamela Anderson, the playmate of February 1990, manages to establish herself as an actress on television -, he has lost credibility and will be devastated by the arrival of the Internet. Ironically, "Playboy has helped to open the floodgates and bring into our societies an uncontrollable flood of pornography and sex monetization," said historian Steven Watts. To the point that the new management decides in 2016 to completely renounce nudity. To backtrack soon after.

Today, Playboy is above all a powerful brand, followed by 8.4 million subscribers on Instagram. But the time is long gone when this improbable assemblage of naked photos and serious texts knew how to capture the attention of readers by telling them about the paradoxes of American society. Hugh Hefner died on September 27, 2017, at 91, having retained his title of editor until his last day. As a last nod to this adventure both personal and collective, the creator of Playboy had made sure to find, for eternity, the one who was his luck and the first naked woman in its pages. Marilyn Monroe and Hugh Hefner rest side by side in a Hollywood cemetery.

Source: leparis

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