Playboy...I Really Did Read the Articles

I couldn’t quite find the quote, but I remember the gist of it. Playboy founder, Hugh Hefner was addressing a gathering of Playmates and said something along the lines that if it wasn’t for them, he’d be the editor of a prestigious literary magazine. I recalled the essence of this quote with the announcement that Playboy magazine plans to move away from publishing nude photos of women—an element that for so long has defined the publication. Of course, with this announcement, the age old claim that, “I only buy it for the articles,” which everyone scoffs at, was the creative element of the magazine’s history most broadcasters clung to. It was as original as a reporter writing about Las Vegas and including the line, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” as part of their lead paragraph. God, I hate that.

Playboy and I go back a long way – long before I was legally allowed to buy it. I remember being either 13 or 14 and standing in a variety store with my father and noticing the latest cover of the magazine, which featured Pamela Sue Martin, a dark-haired beauty who was playing Nancy Drew on TV, and eventually landed on Dynasty. I believe I asked my father about the magazine with the provocative cover featuring Pamela, and to my surprise, he bought it for me – and equally to my surprise, when we got home, my Mother wasn’t offended by the purchase.

Okay, I noticed the pictures; this was long before the Internet, so, yes, they were a revelation to me. But then something else happened – I noticed the articles. The interview in that issue was with William Colby, director of the CIA, there was an article by Carl Sagan, an artistic pictorial by Le Roy Neiman (a very distinctive and wonderful style), and much, much more. I read the magazine, and continued reading it month after month after that. Another friend of mine was also allowed to read the magazine, and we began collecting Playboy’s finding older copies at flea markets, with vendors who didn’t hesitate to sell it to minors. Surprisingly, when we were seeking out copies of the publication, our motivation wasn’t the Playmate, but the Playboy interview.  Had I found the one with the Jimmy Carter interview? How about Groucho Marx or Frank Sinatra? While my friend and I appreciated the Centerfold and the various pictorials, what drove our interest was the wealth and diversity of the articles. At 13 and 14, I was reading articles by F. Lee Bailey, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, James Michener and many, many more. I was reading about social issues, politics, profiles, and some truly excellent fiction.

“I only read it for the articles.”  It may sound lame, but in many ways it was true. You see, if you’re interested in just looking at naked ladies, Playboy isn’t the magazine for you. You have the Centerfold, and before it you might have one pictorial and possibly a smaller one, and after it the same. If you count the many pages published and how many of them are of nudes, I believe you’d discover that 90 percent of the magazine was articles. If seeing naked women was your desire, there were many other magazines out there where the percentage skewed in the other direction, although many of those nudes lacked the artistic nature of the Playboy photo nude.

With the Internet making nudes available, as well as access to pornography, the power of the Playboy nude has waned over the decades. I will not miss the Playboy nude, but I will miss the Playboy of old. I haven’t read Playboy for quite some time. I suspect that due to changing times, and shorter attention spans with today’s young adults, the magazine has adapted and shortened everything. What was once the greatest in-depth interview available out there, with a diverse group of individuals, whether entertainers, politicians, business leaders, or more, has turned into a quick, uninspired interview that no longer holds the stature it once did. You can find books that are compilations of Playboy interviews, and I suggest if you do, you buy them and enjoy the beauty of those interviews, and how they didn’t shy away from addressing topical issues, like racism and the Civil Rights Movement with Frank Sinatra and John Wayne, or World War II and the holocaust with an in-depth interview with Albert Speer.

 

I remember reading an article in one of the magazine’s anniversary issues that I still believe is brilliant. The author wrote an article about writers and authors and went around to famous authors of today and those of yesteryear and asked for a copy of the blank page on pads of paper they would be writing on next, or would have been writing on next. The article was about the blank page, and the possibility of the blank page and what it could represent if it had of been used by the creative mind who owned that pad. It was amazing and strangely compelling.

I applaud Playboy’s move to walk away from the nude, but I implore its editors to look to the past and see what set it apart from other men’s magazines. I believe it would be best for them to move in that direction with the quality of their articles, rather than seeing themselves fall more towards the type of articles we can find in FHM or Maxim magazine. If they can recapture some of that past glory, as well as cultivate the quality of contributors that they once did, maybe Hugh Hefner can stand proudly in front of a crowd and announce that finally he is being recognized for being the publisher of a first-class literary magazine. At least that is my hope.