Playboy died: Is there a future for porn magazines?
On September 28, the founder of Playboy magazine, Hugh Hefner, died., whom friends and admirers lovingly called Hef. After the death of a 91-year-old publisher who rarely appeared in the news in the last couple of years, it turned out that “America’s most famous womanizer” had a lot of fans and fans, including from Russia, and they filled the social networks with mournful posts about “the end of a beautiful era ". It’s customary to speak well about the dead - that’s why every second media has released material about Hefner’s business genius or his struggle for sexual freedom, LGBT rights, HIV-positive people or African Americans. However, the era of traditional erotic magazines, tightly connected with the name of Hefner, really came to an end - and we do not regret a bit about it.
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existed, and the most popular erotic goods were postcards with frank pictures, which were bought by soldiers who longed for a warm home and a women's society. These cards, in fact, inspired Hefner, who managed to war in the last months of World War II. The first print run of the magazine with Marilyn Monroe sold out in a matter of days: in conservative American society, where the baby boomer generation was growing up, the edition with nude beauties became a symbol of forbidden pleasure and an important stage of maturation for any teenage boy who found Playboy under the parental bed .
The editorial staff was proud of not only their sex-positive mission, but also the literary heading, where even Margaret Atwood and Germain Greer published, but, despite informative interviews and high-quality texts, sometimes even feminist ones, the magazine was primarily bought for outright celebrity photo shoots. It is indicative that when launched in the ladies' version of Playboy, which was more popular among gay men than among women, there were far fewer analytical texts and more “typically female” content: photos of naked and not very much men were diluted with a horoscope and recipes. Although Playgirl, which changed its concept several times, existed for forty years, it has never been so popular and has not influenced popular culture as much as Playboy - and erotic magazines for women have always been, and remain, rather a subcultural phenomenon.
Growing up in a conservative family, Hefner dreamed of ridding the country of Puritan morality — and he succeeded, but sixty years later, the journal he founded seemed ridiculously conservative, and his mission is not very clear. To find a photo of a naked person of any gender or celebrity today is not particularly difficult, and the discussion of sexuality is conducted on a completely different level: studies say that even teenagers have little interest in sex. It is already difficult to surprise someone with a naked body - but old-school sexism, which stubbornly seeped even through the “feminist” statements of Hefner, already in the 1970s caused at least bewilderment. Hefner sincerely considered Playboy and himself a member of the movement for the rights and freedom of women - yes, the magazine really was the engine of the sexual revolution, but fought stereotypes only where they restricted freedom to sex without obligation. Some Hefner's moves, such as the publication of a photo session of the transgender model, were very bold for their time - but controversial issues in the publication’s policy
there was much more. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Hefner confirmed that he perceives women as primarily sexual objects, and he immediately added that Playboy had always fought for the right of women to make choices on their own. In this case, the publisher confirmed only the first part of his statement: Hefner worked hard on the image of crazy Casanova, inspired male polygamy with his example and organized orgies for famous friends every week. Women who didn’t meet the sexual hare parameters didn’t exist for Hefner and his magazine, and the freedom struggle was about fighting for the rights of young girls with model parameters to have sex with the magazine’s founder, live in a Playboy mansion and get money for it pocket expenses and plastic surgery. It is logical that Hefner and his magazine advocated affordable abortions and contraception - because they gave the opportunity to have sex freely, without burdening themselves with their families.
In 1963, Gloria Stein, an icon of feminism, wrote the icon of feminism, which was then a beginning freelance journalist: it is not difficult to guess that ordinary "bunnies" were hired not for their progressive views, but solely for pleasing their views. (and not only the views) of male visitors and treated the girls no better than employees of ordinary strip clubs. In the Playboy mansion, too, peculiar order reigned: girls playmates were obliged to come home no later than nine in the evening, wear the same flannel pajamas before going to bed, and during violent parties could leave the Hefner table only for the toilet. All this does not fit with feminist ideas at all, but it shows quite well that the ideologist of Playboy, with all his business savvy, was essentially a teenager, dreaming of a hypertrophied sexual girlfriend who was ready for everything, but true only to him.
The girl, who will be liberated enough to entertain the owner, but at the same time obedient enough to control her (according to Hefner, he was greatly traumatized by the separation from his first wife, whom he caught cheating). It was this female image that was broadcast by Playboy - and behind it other erotic magazines, the creators of which were inspired by the success of Hefner. However, as a correspondent of Newsweek, who visited Playboy’s mansion, wrote poetically, “relationships cannot be built only on sex, so it’s not surprising that the publisher and America ultimately broke up.” Against this background, the reports that Hefner almost lost his hearing due to the abuse of Viagra seemed monstrously ironic: "America's main womanizer" was so much involved in the realization of his fantasies that he did not hear warning signals that herald the decline of the genre he created and the decline of the Playboy .
Playboy sex really doesn’t sell anymore - financial figures confirm this. In 2016, the magazine abandoned photos of completely nude models, but after a year of the experiment was forced to return to the old concept. Publishers wanted to attract a young audience and go on a social network where the nudity is prohibited, but the bid did not play: the magazine’s sales after the rebranding collapsed. However, Playboy Enterprises Corporation has not earned money for a long time exclusively on publishing: at least 40% of the company's revenues bring their own souvenirs and the sale of licenses to use the Playboy brand, the very rabbit profile that is printed on T-shirts and phone cases, and most of the money comes from China .
Despite this, Hefner’s business is losing value, and the magazine’s sales continue to fall, which fits into the general trend: traditional editions for men (even giants like GQ and Esquire) and more hardcore porn magazines like Hustler are losing readership and death Media have been prophesying since the 1990s. Many veteran publications have moved online, but Playboy on the Internet does not seem to be very necessary: there are plenty of erotica and porn for every taste on the Web. In Russia, adjusted for the meager selection of publications, everything happens in approximately the same way: even in progressive FurFur, at first there was the “Girl of the Week” heading, which the magazine later refused. Classic erotic publications were caught between the growing feminist movement, which clearly did not approve of all Playboy's followers, and the porn industry, in which thousands of people work and spin huge sums of money, and such competition is beyond their powers.
PHOTO: Getty images