I was given unprecedented access to the Playboy company archives in Chicago, and had the opportunity to speak with Hefner about his politics and philosophy. Others, especially many feminists, lambasted him for objectifying and exploiting women.Īs a historian of American gender and sexuality, I’ve explored the ways in which Playboy magazine promoted its own version of masculinity and femininity at the height of its influence, the 1950s to the 1970s. Over the nearly 70 years since Hugh Hefner, who died recently at the age of 91, laid out the first issue of Playboy on his kitchen table, the magazine and his personal lifestyle embodied the ultimate expression of heterosexual male privilege and sexual freedom.īecause he was surrounded by young, beautiful women well into old age, celebrants saw in Hefner an almost heroic figure who challenged American sexual puritanism, fought for free speech and lived the ultimate straight male fantasy.
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