playboy50: Let's begin

[Peggy Wilkins]

Here is my contribution to "What Is Playboy".  This will be quite
long... and the best of it is at the end, I think.

In the world of Playboy, I probably stick out like the proverbial sore
thumb.  I'm 37, heterosexual (this question comes up often), female --
and I've been collecting Playboy for nearly 25 years now.  I have an
almost complete collection of back issues (i'm currently missing only
7 issues from 1954), a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the magazine and
its history, pictorials included, and am one of the most vocal Playboy
supporters around.  This is not the sort of thing that one ordinarily
expects to see.  While some of this must be due to the individual
quirkiness of "me", that I exist as a Playboy admirer also speaks to
the broad appeal of Playboy, and says some interesting things about
what it is.  Let's look at how I got here and see if we can draw any
useful conclusions.  Along the way I would like to take a look at some
particular issues of Playboy from around the time I first started
reading it, and discuss what it was that made such an impression on
me.

I came to see my first issue of Playboy in a slightly roundabout (yet
particularly appropriate) way.  I was 12 years old in the spring of
1978, and had been a voracious fan of Marilyn Monroe since I was 10.
That term "fan" (a shortening of the word "fanatic") described me
perfectly at that time, as I sought out literally any and every
reference to Marilyn with a degree of singleminded dedication found
only in the very young.  I happened to notice on the newsstands one
day the May 1978 issue of Oui magazine, which had on its cover an
actress named Linda Kerridge who was a stunning double of Marilyn.
Being the MM fanatic that I was, I had to have this issue.  However,
obtaining it was a bit problematic; Oui's publisher was Hugh Hefner,
and as Playboy's "sister" publication, it was an adult title that was
tantalizingly unavailable to me.  I tried and failed several times to
purchase this issue, until evenutally, as someone who at that age
could (often quite literally) never take no for an answer, I ended up
stealing a copy from a book store!  (What a shame that societal
attitudes sometimes cause one to decide to resort to such behavior;
but that is another topic altogether.)

I watched the bookstore for future issues of Oui, scanning the
magazine for reader letters about the Marilyn feature and hoping for
more pictures of Linda as Marilyn, and so ended up with a couple more
issues.  Now to come to the relevant part: each issue of Oui carried a
full page advertisement for the corresponding issue of Playboy.
Printed against a full page picture of the Playmate of the Month was a
small reproduction of that issue's cover and a summary of its
contents.  I had taken particular note of the ad in that May 1978
issue, and then looking through the July 1978 issue of Oui, I noticed
the Playboy ad page with the July 1978 cover and a particularly lovely
picture of Playmate Karen Morton.  The cover showed Pamela Sue Martin,
then the star of the Nancy Drew TV series, with the caption, "TV's
Nancy Drew Undraped".  Corny as this sounds, as a 12-year-old devotee
of the Nancy Drew mysteries (you are probably all cringing now!), I
really had to see that issue.  So that's how the July 1978 Playboy,
volume 25 number 7, came to be my first issue.  It may not be
politically correct, but that's how my interest in Marilyn Monroe led
me to Playboy magazine.

I will mention as an aside that my interest in Marilyn was a very
natural thing for me.  I feel it is relevant to say here that I had
always had a fascination for beautiful women, in some form or another,
for as long as I can remember.  When I was three I was transfixed by
the pictures of carefully posed costumed ballarinas in my father's
ballet book (he came from a family of musicians/performers and so had
quite a music collection, and he was interested in photography as
well).  I was also fascinated by Yvonne DeCarlo and Tina Louise on
television by the time I was six (Tina interestingly played a
Marilyn-like character on Gilligan's Island); then Elizabeth
Montgomery in the delightful "Bewitched"; and a few years later, after
seeing Norman Mailer's book filled with an amazing collection of
photographs, Marilyn Monroe.  My interest in Marilyn developed much
more strongly than any other interest had before it.  My point in
mentioning all this is that my interest in images of women goes back
to such an early time in my life that I feel it was something inborn,
and so in a way the images I saw presented in Playboy were a very
natural match for this inborn disposition.  Many people talk about how
remarkable the Playmates are, and they are -- but to me they seemed to
resonate with me in a very personal way, as they played to my natural
interest.  Playboy pictures interested me in much the same way as
pictures of Marilyn did.  Of course my interest in Playboy goes beyond
this -- but this was a very early, and I feel significant, determining
factor.

I wasn't able to get many issues of Playboy around this time due to
the age difficulty, but I did check out issues on the newsstand
whenever I could.  Somehow I found out that Marilyn Monroe was in the
January 1979 25th Anniversary issue, and that became my third issue of
Playboy.

And this 25th Anniversary issue is something I really want to talk
about here.  It delighted me from the first time I saw it just because
of all the references to Marilyn -- and it was also my first view of
her Golden Dreams calendar pose in color.  I ended up reading and
rereading this issue cover to cover over time -- perhaps this is the
result of Playboy issues being hard for me to obtain at the time, and
therefore few and far between -- and it left me literally in awe.  It
was the best issue of a magazine that I had ever seen, and I was
someone who enjoyed a lot of magazines.  It also told me a lot, both
implicitly and explicitly, about what Playboy was about.

Here is some of what left such a strong impression on me:

- the size of the magazine: at 410 pages, it was physically imposing
  in a way that few other magazines were
- excerpts from The Playboy Philosophy -- I had never heard of it before
  seeing it here, but its reasoned approach to quality of life issues
  appealed very strongly to my natural sensibility
- Interview with Marlon Brando: I admit I read it because he knew Marilyn,
  but I particularly enjoyed the lucid writing in the introduction.  And
  I still remember some of the things he said in the interview to this
  day.
- the foldout of all the covers and centerfolds, and the mini-centerfolds
  in the Playmate Review: I think these are most responsible for my
  becoming a Playboy collector, because they were so beautiful that I simply 
  had to see them full size!
- the Playmate Review: I knew two of the Playmates from my two previous
  issues, and Playboy cared enough both to give me new pictures of them,
  and to give updated information on "Playmates' Progress".  Seeing them
  reprised brought a feeling of familiarity
- 25 Beautiful Years pictorial retrospective: the cream of the crop of
  Playmates, and as for the non-Playmates, I knew many of these women
  through my research on Marilyn, and I was thrilled that there were
  nude pictures of them here: Kim Novak, Jayne Mansfield, Ursula Andress,
  etc.
- Illustrated History of Playboy: it put the magazine I was holding in
  my hands into a larger perspective
- the cartoons: a large number, diverse in drawing style, some full page,
  and some self-referential of Playboy (e.g., "We can't make him take
  [the centerfold] down, it's his grandmother")

I started buying every issue of Playboy starting with the January 1980
issue.  Here are some particularly strong impressions from that first
full year.

January 1980: Playmate Gig Gangel's centerfold left me in awe.  The
beautiful model, elegant set, and deep colors, the supreme sharpness
of the image printed on glossy paper, and the pose and expert lighting
that focused one's attention directly on the model all worked together
to make me want to look at that picture, and just keep looking.  I
quite literally could hardly take my eyes from it.

April 1980: The Playmate Reunion brought back familiar faces and
centerfolds from that January 1979 foldout; this treatment of the
Playmates demonstrated their importance to the world of Playboy.

May 1980: Terri Knepper (Welles) cover: I could hardly look away from
this amazing cover: bright colors, beautiful sharp picture, and above
all one of the best models ever.  A clear demonstration of the impact
and importance of the cover.

June 1980: My first Playmate of the Year, Dorothy Stratten.  Another
superb cover.  The contents copy called her pictorial "luscious" and
it really was.  The closing picture evoked Marilyn Monroe in the best
possible way -- that is, in the sense of spirit, rather than in
imitation.

So what did I learn from my first few Playboy issues in general, and
from the 25th anniversary issue in particular?

- Playboy is a magazine with a formidable history.  It is aware of that 
  history and celebrates it; and that history is worth celebrating.  I
  believe that this is a significant point, and one that we should be
  aware of when we think about tradition and innovation in Playboy for
  the future.

- Playboy has an attitude: it is playful and fun (covers, cartoons,
  humor), and it is serious (the Philosophy).  These traits are no more
  contradictory when they appear in the same magazine than they are when
  they appear in the same person.

- As a corollary: Playboy assumes a certain level of sophistication in
  its audience and does not talk down to them.

- Playboy has a strong visual impact.  This is demonstrated in the art,
  photography, cover design, and centerfolds.  Implicit in this is the
  assumption that the appreciation of aesthetic beauty is a natural
  human trait, and that it is worth cultivating.

- Playmates are special; the centerfold image is special.  That is
  certainly a topic unto itself, but for now I will say that the
  Playmates give a very special sense of familiarity and continuity to
  the magazine for those who follow it regularly.

I believe that these are among the most important defining
characteristics of Playboy: these are the traits that led to its wide
acceptance and wild popularity.  They certainly led me to sit up and
take notice.  As Playboy heads into the future, these principles must
be revisited, re-evaluated, and ultimately re-formed.
__
Peggy Wilkins                                         mozart@uchicago.edu
Marilyn on the Web                 http://glamournet.com/legends/Marilyn/
Admin, Playboy Mailing List            http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PML1