playboys impact on women still has people talking
Last Updated : GMT 05:17:37
Emiratesvoice, emirates voice
Emiratesvoice, emirates voice
Last Updated : GMT 05:17:37
Emiratesvoice, emirates voice

With Hefner gone,

Playboy's impact on women still has people talking

Emiratesvoice, emirates voice

Emiratesvoice, emirates voice Playboy's impact on women still has people talking

Hugh Hefner
Washington - Emirates Voice

Playboy degraded women, it empowered women. It liberated them, and objectified them.

The legacy of the iconic magazine founded six decades ago by Hugh Hefner, who died Wednesday at 91, remains a topic of heated debate, especially its impact on women.

Playboy brought nudity into the mainstream and paved the way for the proliferation of hard-core pornography, while shaking up a culture which had long kept sexuality in the shadows.

While Hefner and his magazine drew fire from some women's advocates, others said Playboy's impact could be seen as positive in many ways.

Carrie Pitzulo, a Colorado State University instructor and author of a 2011 book, "Bachelors and Bunnies: The Sexual Politics of Playboy," argues that the magazine's impact has been more complex than it appears on the surface.

"My assumption had been it was a very sexist magazine," Pitzulo said.

"But once I started diving in I discovered there was lot more going on."

Pitzulo said Playboy enabled "a lot of progressive messages" and that "it was much more pro-women than many gave it credit for."

Playboy and Hefner supported abortion rights, access to birth control and the Equal Rights Amendment, and gave funding to rape crisis centers, she noted.

In the early years of Playboy, "the Playmates were significant in telling the world that good girls like sex too -- that wasn't said in the 1950s and 1960s."

In that sense, Pitzulo argued that Playboy helped combat a notion "that you were either a good girl or a bad girl, that there were no other choices."

- 'Complicated' sexual freedom -

Others offer a different interpretation of Playboy's impact on society.

Elizabeth Fraterrigo, a Loyola University Chicago professor, argued in her 2011 book, "Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America," that the values in Playboy were not quite as feminist as Hefner and his supporters claimed.

She wrote that Playboy promoted "a sexualized popular culture (which) complicates notions of sexual freedom," and that the magazine became "an authoritative arbiter of beauty and sex appeal" while "driving the culture to embrace narrow standards of physical attractiveness and sexual expression."

- 'Commodification' of women -

Some blamed Playboy for creating a looser moral climate, claiming it led to exploitation and hard-core pornography.

Patrick Trueman, president of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said that Playboy "popularized the commodification of the female body in soft-core pornographic magazines in the 1960s, and it laid the groundwork for the public health crisis of Internet pornography that America is experiencing today."

Frederick Lane, a New York author of "Obscene Profits: The Entrepreneurs of Pornography in the Cyber Age," said that "We can't lay all the blame for (the pornography epidemic) on Hefner's feet," and that his legacy is complicated.

"He did improve the position of women in society by opening up the discussion of sex," Lane said.

"The flip side of that is that his view of women in a sexual relationship was a relatively narrow one, although I think it extended as he got older."

Lane said Hefner's support for transgender causes and his featuring of a transgender model in Playboy "was revolutionary in his time."

Jennifer Lena, a Columbia University sociologist, said the impact of Playboy and Hefner on women is not just about sexuality.

She pointed to "Playboy’s contribution to advancing and defending the freedom of the press, fighting back retrograde obscenity laws, and advancing the rights of women to express their sexuality. "

Lena noted that Playboy also broke ground by publishing Charles Beaumont’s "The Crooked Man," in 1955, a dystopian story where heterosexuals are persecuted in the same manner of homosexuals at that time.

"I think Playboy was far more important to the culture than just sex," said Rebecca Lieb, an independent media analyst.

"Playboy was a publisher of great stories, and Playboy and Hefner were champions of free speech and civil rights," she said.

Lieb said that some women may have been offended by Playboy's sexuality, but that "this was not done in a manner of exploitation or coercion."

 

Name *

E-mail *

Comment Title*

Comment *

: Characters Left

Mandatory *

Terms of use

Publishing Terms: Not to offend the author, or to persons or sanctities or attacking religions or divine self. And stay away from sectarian and racial incitement and insults.

I agree with the Terms of Use

Security Code*

playboys impact on women still has people talking playboys impact on women still has people talking

 



Name *

E-mail *

Comment Title*

Comment *

: Characters Left

Mandatory *

Terms of use

Publishing Terms: Not to offend the author, or to persons or sanctities or attacking religions or divine self. And stay away from sectarian and racial incitement and insults.

I agree with the Terms of Use

Security Code*

playboys impact on women still has people talking playboys impact on women still has people talking

 



GMT 13:06 2012 Thursday ,14 June

Steady rise in temperature forecast in UAE

GMT 17:11 2016 Wednesday ,20 April

Hamdallah, Singapore Prime Minister meet

GMT 18:41 2017 Wednesday ,02 August

Bangladesh separates conjoined twins in rare surgery

GMT 00:59 2017 Monday ,20 February

Rousseff urges vote against impeachment

GMT 07:11 2018 Thursday ,18 January

Germany loans Lithuania 'birth certificate'

GMT 15:00 2017 Monday ,18 September

National Pavilion UAE’s Venice Internship now open

GMT 10:36 2017 Sunday ,31 December

Swimming with whale sharks in Mexico

GMT 15:02 2017 Wednesday ,22 February

5 Natural home remedies to stop hair loss

GMT 07:42 2017 Wednesday ,26 July

Khalid 5 football tournament launched

GMT 07:22 2017 Tuesday ,05 December

Mario Centeno, the 'Ronaldo' of the eurozone

GMT 12:51 2017 Monday ,08 May

Tadweer launches second e-Services edition

GMT 06:51 2017 Monday ,23 October

Electricity Minister receives German ambassador

GMT 12:24 2017 Tuesday ,17 October

Underlines importance of reconciliation

GMT 06:08 2014 Friday ,15 August

UN vote Friday on measure to weaken Iraq Islamists

GMT 14:43 2013 Tuesday ,04 June

British Council launches new global English exam

GMT 11:45 2013 Wednesday ,17 April

Syria photograph wins Pulitzer

GMT 02:39 2016 Friday ,04 November

Singaporean president visits Giza pyramids plateau
Emiratesvoice, emirates voice
 
 Emirates Voice Facebook,emirates voice facebook  Emirates Voice Twitter,emirates voice twitter Emirates Voice Rss,emirates voice rss  Emirates Voice Youtube,emirates voice youtube  Emirates Voice Youtube,emirates voice youtube

Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©

Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©

emiratesvoieen emiratesvoiceen emiratesvoiceen emiratesvoiceen
emiratesvoice emiratesvoice emiratesvoice
emiratesvoice
بناية النخيل - رأس النبع _ خلف السفارة الفرنسية _بيروت - لبنان
emiratesvoice, Emiratesvoice, Emiratesvoice