PLAYBOY in a marriage culture

[Peggy Wilkins]

I thought some might find this little thing I wrote on the CC message
boards today of general interest.

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I think that PLAYBOY thrived most as a handbook for the bachelor in a
marriage culture. It really stood out in that culture. The bachelor
pleases himself, not others; men get married to please others, not
themselves. Excuse my generalizations, I only make them because they
are true to a large extent.

We no longer live in a marriage culture, though certainly people still
do get married. However, the age of first marriage has notably
increased, and many women (and men) postpone childbearing. I remember
reading accounts of published studies in the '80s that found that
mothers are no longer distressed if their daughters never marry. I
believe the term "old maid" has all but vanished nowadays.

I know women of my mother's generation who felt that marriage was
supposed to be their goal in life, and it was meant to happen as soon
after high school as possible. These women suppressed their own goals
and desires in service to the expectation that they marry and have
children. Many of them ended up feeling they had missed out in not
pursuing their own talents; I know one who ended up a bitter divorced
woman, down on most men, because she had bought into that little
illusion.

I think there is still room for PLAYBOY to be elegant and
sophisticated -- it should most certainly stay out of the frat house,
where it ought to be quite uncomfortable -- but it must do so in a
different way. The bachelor is no longer such an endagered species,
and times have changed such that men no longer require a championing
voice leading them away from the oppressive altar.