Hefner: Dirty old man or radical feminist?

R18
•
G
BOOKS
T H E G LO B E A N D M A I L
•
S AT U R D AY , J U N E 1 8 , 2 0 1 1
SOCIAL STUDIES
Hefner: Dirty old man or radical feminist?
Carrie Pitzulo says there’s more to the Chicago hedonist who created Playboy than the swift dismissals offered by most feminists
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Bachelors and Bunnies
The Sexual Politics of Playboy
By Carrie Pitzulo
University of Chicago Press,
240 pages, $24
................................................................
REVIEWED BY
ROSEMARY COUNTER
................................................................
T
here’s a famous shirt reading
This is What a Feminist
Looks Like, worn by cheeky feminists, ironic activists and – just
once on the cover of Ms. magazine – President Barack Obama.
The point, of course, is that feminists come in all shapes and
sizes, in both genders and across
all age groups, and sometimes
where you least expect it.
It’s a lovely thought, and I’d
like to believe it. But if I had to
choose one image of what a
feminist doesn’t look like, it
would be this: An old rich white
man, in a cheesy signature silk
robe better suited to soft-core
porn, surrounded by a rotating
harem of young blondes, preferably dressed as bunnies.
But I might be wrong, says Carrie Pitzulo, author of Bachelors
and Bunnies: The Sexual Politics of
Playboy. She says there’s more to
Hugh Hefner – the Chicago hedonist who created Playboy in 1953
and morphed it from a magazine
to a lifestyle to a brand – than
the swift dismissals offered by
most feminists (rumour is Gloria
Steinem told him, “A woman
reading Playboy feels a little like
a Jew reading a Nazi manual”).
Digging though archives of
memos, correspondence and
readers’ letters, Pitzulo asks
some unlikely questions: Is it
possible to reinterpret Hefner as
the creator of sex positivism? As
a liberator of women from a rigid
Madonna-whore dichotomy? An
usher of all genders into a modern age of individual freedoms?
Or, as I suspect, is a “revisionist
interpretation” a whole lot of
wishful thinking?
In search of answers, Pitzulo
begins with what we’re all thinking: the centrefolds. While objectification comes straight to mind,
Hefner believes playmates are
“glorified” as a “friend and
equal.” And, to his credit, they’re
far from wanton libertines or
nameless nudes: Through interviews, the playmates are often
presented as educated, assertive,
hard-working and individualist
(also presented, however, are
their measurements).
Hefner doesn’t see any of this
as degrading, of course, nor does
he think anything less of girls
who pose nude (in fact, Hefner
even persuades Playboy’s receptionist to strip, what’s now
known as “sexual harassment”).
Perhaps most important, and
without even trying, “Playboy
insisted women had desire, indeed a right to desire, just as society assumed men did.”
And to go with the pictures, articles such as Don’t Hate Yourself
in the Morning walk a fine line
between deeply offensive and
refreshingly liberating. As Playboy becomes increasingly jour-
HEF’S HERSTORY
A brief history of Playboy’s
ups and downs:
..........................................................
The 1953 inaugural issue, featuring nude photographs of
Marilyn Monroe, prints an article on alimony called “Miss
Gold-Digger.”
..........................................................
Feminist writer Alice Denham
poses in 1956, calls the magazine “a two-edged sword: sexism versus freedom.”
..........................................................
In 1962, future feminist leader
Gloria Steinem goes undercover as a Playboy Club Bunny
waitress.
..........................................................
Playboy’s first non-white
model appears in 1964, referred to as a “China Doll” and
“Oriental Charmer.”
..........................................................
In 1967, Playmates make
$5,000 for posing nude – more
than three times the median
annual income for all women.
..........................................................
Forget clever angling and wellplaced feathers; Playmates
reveal their pubic hair in 1971.
..........................................................
In the early 1970s, readership
hits its peak: seven million per
month, a quarter of them
women.
..........................................................
Hefner, in the iconic smoking jacket, poses with a pair of bunnies at the Playboy mansion. ROBERT MORA/GETTY IMAGES
nalistic in the mid-sixties (giving
the old excuse “I only read it for
the articles” new merit), the
magazine explored liberal positions on civil rights, Vietnam,
free speech and a “surprising
degree of fair and sympathetic
gender politics.” Among hard-hitting articles about all this political upheaval – many times I
wondered if Hefner had just
found himself in the right place
at the right time – are pieces for
men about fashion, cooking and
home decor. Though Hefner was
famously fixated on male roles
and “womanization,” there’s no
denying he was a modern metrosexual long before this generation made it cool.
Though always at its strongest
when serving his own bed-hopping agenda, Hefner’s public sup-
port of feminist causes – birth
control, equality, abortion rights
– is as impressive as it is surprising. As is Hef’s ideology of gender as a social construct and
sexuality as a wide spectrum.
Unfortunately, Bachelors and Bunnies is more academic than biographical, a possible mismatch in
tone and topic, so we don’t get
many of the dirty details, which,
when it comes to Hefner, is possibly the best part. Also largely
missing is any meaningful comparison to Helen Gurley Brown,
Cosmopolitan magazine’s editorin-chief, Sex and the Single Girl
author and Hefner’s natural editorial foil (they’re buds, actually).
A story like Playboy’s, as much as
it demands intense cultural critique, could benefit from a wellplaced wink.
Rosemary Counter
But that’s just my own brand of
feminism, which is another
broad’s offensive comment
(wink!). Feminism, much like a
magazine, is a revolving door of
ideas – often complicated and
contradictory – that must evolve
to survive. These days, Playboy is
trying desperately to compete
with a porn industry that leapfrogged over Hefner’s quaint centrefolds. But don’t think Hefner
is giving up: The Girls Next Door,
the E! Network reality show of
Hef’s life with three girlfriends,
remains top-rated and muchloved – particularly with female
viewers.
................................................................
Unlike most girls at her gym,
Toronto writer Rosemary Counter
doesn’t have a Playboy bunny tattoo.
CHILDREN’S BOOK SUSAN PERREN
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................
FOR TOP POPS & RAD DADS
STATE OF WONDER
Ann Patchett
A pharmaceutical research
scientist is sent to Brazil
to track down her former
mentor. Plagued by
trepidation, she embarks
on an odyssey into the
insect-infested jungle in
the hopes of finding her as
well as answers to several
troubling questions
involving the death of her
research partner, the state
of her company's future,
and her own past.
INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE
OF MARKUS PAUL
David Adams Richards
An intricate novel about the
miscarriage of justice in
the case of one man's
death in a shipping yard in
New Brunswick in 1985.
Searing, brilliant, and
tension-filled, this is a
foreboding tale about truth,
lies and power —
quintessential David
Adams Richards.
ROBOPOCALYPSE
Daniel H. Wilson
Two decades into the future
humans are fighting for
their very survival when a
powerful AI computer goes
rogue and all the machines
on earth rebel against their
human controllers. This is
the story of humanity's
battle with smart cars and
independent-minded
kitchen appliances.
THE DEATH OF
DONNA WHALEN
Michael Winter
When Donna Whalen is
stabbed thirty-one times
in her home in St. John’s,
everyone believes the
culprit to be her abusive
boyfriend. This novel,
based on the trial, follows
the course of justice as it
takes many unpredictable
twists and turns before
the truth is finally
revealed.
Save even
more with a
BOOK CITY
Loyalty Card!
FANTASTIC
BARGAINS!
THE QUOTABLE
ROBERTSON DAVIES
Wit and wisdom from one
of Canada’s most
distinguished men of
letters.
Pub. List $24.99
Now $4.99
THE GUINEA PIG DIARIES
A. J. Jacobs takes on a
series of life-altering
experiments that produce
hilarious and thoughtprovoking results.
Pub. List $32.00
Now $5.99
LIBERTY
The lives and times of six
courageous, freethinking
women in revolutionary
France.
Pub. List $16.95
Now $5.99
DICTATION
A quartet of long stories
that showcase Cynthia
Ozick’s sly humour and
piercing insight into the
human heart.
Pub. List $24.00
Now $6.99
GINSENG,
THE DIVINE ROOT
The curious history of the
plant that captivated the
world and wound up at
the very centre of
alternative medicine.
Pub. List $23.95
Now $7.99
PANAMA FEVER
The thrilling story of
exploration, conquest,
money, politics and
medicine that was the
building of the Panama
Canal.
Pub. List $34.00
Now $8.99
THE WELL-MADE BOOK
Essays and lectures by
the influential printer and
book designer, Daniel
Berkeley Updike.
Pub. List $55.00
Now $8.99
View these titles and more at www.bookcity.ca Open late seven nights a week
2350 Bloor St. W., 501 Bloor St. W., 348 Danforth, 1950 Queen E., 1430 Yonge Street
The Honeybee Man
By Lela Nargi, illustrated by Kyrsten
Brooker, Schwartz & Wade Books,
32 pages, $19.99, ages 4 to 7
................................................................
After his early-morning cup of
tea, Fred, a.k.a. The Honeybee
Man, opens a trap door on the
third floor of his Brooklyn house
and climbs out onto the roof.
From this vantage point, he surveys the quiet city around him:
“Brownstones and linden trees, a
tall clock tower, and bridges in
the distance.” On the roof,
though, there is “another, tiny
city. It has three houses, each
with two white stories and one
red story, and inside thousands
of tiny rooms made of wax.”
All appears to be quiet in the
houses of this small city, but Fred
knows otherwise. Inside those
buildings, those hives, Queen
bees Mab, Nefertiti and Boadicea
rule their city states of thousands
of worker bees. “Good morning,
my bees, my darlings!” Fred cries.
As the morning progresses and
the city around him awakens,
Fred watches his bees leave the
hive in search of all that city gardens have to offer – nectar from
sweet peas and squash blossoms,
sage flowers and linden flowers.
So charming a companion is our
Honeybee Man, so intriguing are
his mental and physical peregrinations, that the readers may not
really cotton on to the fact that
they are on a learning mission:
By the end of this, they will have
learned almost all that needs to
be known about beekeeping,
An illustration by Kyrsten Brooker from Lela Nargi’s The Honeybee Man.
honey-making and honey harvesting.
Alberta resident Kyrsten Brooker’s collage-and-oil illustrations,
expansive and at times surreal,
play no small part in the visual
and gustatory delights between
the covers of the book. Even the
endpapers, with their diagrams
of bees, cross-sections of flowers
and beehives offer opportunities
for stealth learning.