I recently bought a big coffee table book that summarizes 50 years of Playboy magazine. I bought it used for four dollars.
Playboy magazine was a big part of my self-discovery experience when I hit puberty. Playboy and I basically grew up together. Those were the days when Sports Illustrated concentrated entirely on sports. I was curious what some of those old pictures would look like from my current perspective and what emotional charge they might still contain.
First, a little background. Puberty, in a family that fights about the meaning of “naughty,” is an adventure. We had purists who were pretty much afraid of everything related to feeling good. They viewed life as a cosmic minefield, and they were in constant fear of offending a deity who would afflict them with dire consequences just for enjoying themselves. There were no rules posted, you just had to be darned careful.
Others in the family rejected this kind of obsessive piety with a reactionary sort of defiance that led to some strange behaviors. If you are twelve years old, sorting through those polarized attitudes and values in search of something coherent is a challenge.
In the midst of all this was Playboy magazine. The magazine appointed itself the arbiter of cool. The implied message was that if you could find the key that they found, you too could live like Hef.
As I looked through the book, my first impression was how unimaginative the photographs are. Any element that might distinguish a photo has always been airbrushed away by their editors, of course. I suppose they want to make sure that the least literate person can find something in the pictures that they can relate to. The images are about as obvious and uncomplicated as a bacon-cheeseburger.
Puberty today has got to be a really different experience than it was in my time. The Internet brought a revolution in terms what what is available to the adolescent. I used to sneak into Dad’s closet to get the magazines. I took great care to stack them in exactly the same order as I found them once I was done. With the on-line content, Dad will never know.
What did I learn from my tour of the book? The girls in the magazine these days still say with their eyes, “You’ll never be good enough for me,” just as they did from day one. Real artistry on the part of the photographer is still taboo, and the photos all have to fit a formula. All imperfections are still denied through the miracles of computerized special effects.
Revisiting the magazine was similar to a fairly recent visit to the house I lived in when I was in first grade. My impression was, “Wow. It’s so tiny!” Things that once towered in importance can melt away. I do take some comfort in recognizing that Playboy is basically a bacon-cheeseburger. It once looked like steak to me.
