Celebrities on the Newsstand

[Alfred Urrutia]

--- Dan Stiffler <calendar-girls@mindspring.com> wrote:

> Geez, this is great.  So the best thing for PLAYBOY to do is stick a
> celerity on the cover and look just like every other "fashion"
> magazine on the newsstand.  Frankly, I don't get this
> follow-the-masses mentality to which PLAYBOY now subscribes.  It's as
> if the best way to design a magazine cover is to trot off to the
> newsstand and see what everyone else is doing.  Then when your
> magazine looks like everyone else's you can compete for the
> "camouflage of the month" title.

There are two issues here, though.  Trail-blazing (or being unique)
and maintaining the interest of those people who you are hoping will
buy your magazine.  So I see both sides.  Sure, Playboy shouldn't copy
other magazines or worry about what the fad of the month is and do its
best to jump on the bandwagon.  At the same time, celebrity pictorials
are more interesting to more people now than before.  Partly because
more young actresses are willing to do them.  Again, I'm not the type
that likes a pictorial because of who it is specifically nearly as
much as because of how it was done and how she (whoever she might be)
looks.

To put it another way, I have never gotten why it's so important or
such a big seller to have Brad Pitt or Catherine Zeta-Jones do voices
in animated movies. I mean, vs. having good voice actors carry the
characters.  But apparently it's important to many movie goers and the
studios are convinced that it's a deal maker.  I think the same sort
of thing applies to pictorials.

> When a reader of PLAYBOY meets a playmate, he is meeting her for the
> first time.  He has no preconceived fantasies about her, as he does in
> the case of celebrities.  He has never said about the playmate, "Boy,
> I sure would like to see her without her panties on."  She is new and
> fresh and he meets her on her own (and the magazine's) terms.

Hahaha, I beg to differ.  Most readers have *loads* of preconceived
fantasies about whatever Playmate he's looking at in Playboy.  They
are probably pretty similar from month to month but those fantasies
are legion and they are very detailed.

> So the difference is this: feminists have long argued that PLAYBOY
> appeals to adolescent male fantasies (Barbara Ehrenreich probably does
> the best job of this in her Hearts of Men), that PLAYBOY fixes a man
> in an adolescent frame of mind and does not allow him to grow up
> (Peter Pan syndrome).  I am arguing here that feminists like
> Ehrenreich have never understood the role of the playmate story in
> fulfilling the relationship that a serious reader of PLAYBOY has with
> his playmate.  The playmate is not just an object of desire, although
> she certainly is that.  She is also the potential girl next door, the
> girl who is cute or drop dead beautiful, but who is also within reach
> and with whom the PLAYBOY reader might have a relationship based on
> the information he has about her life's story.  In other words, she is
> a real woman.
> 
> On the other hand, the celebrity pictorial does in fact appeal to the
> adolescent fantasy of wondering what the girl looks like without her
> clothes.  With a celebrity pictorial only the baser instincts are
> functioning.  This is not a girl next door whom the reader is meeting
> for the first time.  It is a girl about whom the reader has already
> fantasized and for whom the nude pictorial offers an affirmation of
> his power.  He has wondered what she looks like without her panties
> and now, with a $6.00 purchase, he gets to see.
> 
> To put this at its most simple: With a celebrity, the reader has
> already met the girl in the limelight and has a preconceived fantasy
> about her body: the nude pictorial offers a payoff, but only that.
> With a playmate, the reader is meeting her for the first time with no
> preconceived fantasy.  Whatever fantasy develops is the product of the
> playmate's story and PLAYBOY's presentation of her.
> 
> To not see this difference (i.e., to think a nude woman is a nude
> woman is a nude woman) is to not understand the singular power of
> PLAYBOY's playmates.  It's an error that some feminists continue to
> make.  However, if PLAYBOY continues its own obsession with celebrity
> pictorials, it will in fact obscure this important distinction because
> the magazine will become known for its celebrities, not its playmates.
> And then the book will become nothing more than an adolescent fix.

Most celebrity pictorials (although maybe not Playboy's) have
*interviews*, however deep or shallow.  So the reader gets the same
sort of meeting her for the first time benefit.  I know that I've
"learned a new thing or two" about some of my favorite actresses or
models based on the interview that goes along with the pictorials in
Maxim, FHM, Bikini, Details, etc.  So I don't get the distinction
you're making.  Sure, the reader is more aware of the celebrity before
seeing the pictorial(s) but, depending on the celebrity, he may
already have seen her nude in a movie so the "preconceived fantasy"
might already be fulfilled.





Alfred.

=====
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"When you're surrounded by midgets with hammers, you know
 you're going to get a pounding."
 - Triple-H, on how horror movies can help you to evaluate
   real life dangers.
Alfred Urrutia                     rampagingsloth@yahoo.com