Hugh Hefner’s Playboy is an emblem of ultimate fantasy and till date males from all across the world fantasize about the king-size living that is associated with it.
Naked women and a mansion with fantastical party scenes are all that the magazine and the brand is associated with.
Critical Question About Playboy!
Even after all praise and sexual revolution that the magazine has brought to the world, some may agree that what is shown to us folks about Playboy is ‘selective memory’. There is no doubt that racism was ripped out of the lives of many black women who worked for it. These were the women who were able to perform for a white audience at a playboy club. Coming back to the question that has been brushed under the carpet since 1953 (when magazines first issue was published) is the perspective of women.
The commodification of women is the DNA of the brand and this just cannot be denied. Without this, Playboy is not what it is today. Nobody asked a single woman involved in the skin show about how she felt walking with a bunny tail attached to her rear end while being clad in skimpy clothes! Perhaps, Marilyn Monroe (first cover girl of the magazine) set the standards so high that there was no room for critics.
Amazon Prime had a ten-part series about Playboy which has displayed Hugh as a visionary who favored the world with sexual liberation! It’s true and acceptable but why is there not a slight mention of the viewpoint of women who worked for the brand? Everything regarding this is swept under the rug! From Elizabeth Elam to Dana Taylor, there is no contemporary who has yet talked about the flipside of the brand. We hope to get a celebrity for this soon!
