Hefner and Friends
by admin - October 30th, 2013
Everyone who knows the name Hugh Hefner knows about his life surrounded by beautiful women with perfectly engineered bodies. Hefner is known for his Playboy Mansion, Playboy Bunnies, and Playboy magazine. When reading chapter six of Andrew Dunar’s, America in the Fifties, I was surprised to find that Playboy magazine was founded in the 1950’s. The Fifties is typically seen as a time period in which families were perfect and life was so simple, but the topic of sex is often overlooked.
In 1938 a man named Alfred Kinsey began researching sex and marriage. Kinsey and his assistants interviewed thousands of people at different stages in relationships by 1953, and they discovered that, “12 percent of males, but only 6 percent of females, had sex by the age of sixteen” (Dunar 187). Despite the fact that sixteen is the age of consent in some states today, it is way too young to be having sex. A sixteen year old is hormonal and has no idea what they want for their future for sure.
Hugh Hefner followed Kinsey’s innovative openness about sex and sexuality. Hefner released his first issue of Playboy in December of 1953, with a one thousand dollar loan from his mother, an idea of what the American male was interested in, and a naked picture of Marilyn Monroe as the first centerfold. Each copy sold for fifty cents, and 53,000 copies were sold. Hefner received instant fame. He threw parties and always had a stunning woman by his side. Hefner, “expanded beyond his publishing empire to establish Playboy Clubs in large cities, where cocktail waitresses, dubbed “Bunnies,” dressed in skimpy skintight apparel with a bunny tail as an accessory’ (Dunar 188). Hefner was selling the concept of women as objects of sex. The magazine contains pornographic images, and has for the past 60 years.
Marilyn Monroe’s fame has also shown to be long lasting. Teenage girls today admire Monroe’s beauty and constantly quote her on social networking sites, like tumblr. Although some of these quotes are accurate, they give a false image of Monroe. She was married three times, all ending in divorce, had an affair with both John and Robert Kennedy, and wore scandalous clothing and posed naked. Divorce was becoming more common in the Fifties but it was still looked down upon. Having an affair with the president of the United States and his brother was quite promiscuous. Her clothing choices were not appropriate in the time period as well, and she died from drug overdose, ending her life full of sex. Women today praise a woman they don’t know much about, based on her looks and what she had to say.
Playboy was one of the first ways to access pornographic material, and is still extremely popular today. Hugh Hefner gave men of all ages a chance to explore sex outside of the bedroom, something that had not been provided previous to the magazine. Access to pornography has become much easier with internet, and the subject of sex is often discussed too much at young ages. The percentage of people having sex by age sixteen has probably escalated drastically in the past years because girls see images of women half naked and believe that is how they should look, and boys see images of these women and want to explore.
— Haley W.
Like Haley, I was also surprised upon discovering that Playboy was first released during the 1950s, because the idea of sex is not usually associated with the fifties. I find it somewhat comical that Hefner published such a scandalous magazine “with a one thousand dollar loan from his mother.” Furthermore, before reading chapter 6 in the Dunar book, I was unaware of the fact that Marilyn Monroe was the first centerfold in Hefner’s magazine. I think many people overlook this aspect of Monroe– they paint her as an iconic figure without understanding why. And while she may have been somewhat promiscuous for the fifties, I think it is this promiscuity that makes her so iconic– she was unlike any female figure before her.
As Haley and Erin have both expressed, I was also shocked by the fact that Hugh Hefner’s mother funded the first publication of Hefner’s notoriously racy magazine. I was also surprised to learn that Marilyn Monroe was divorced three times. I was unaware that she had ever been married. This blog post disproves many of the common misconceptions about women in society during the 1950s. Not every women during the time period was a “prim and proper” stay-at-home mom. Many women chose not to follow a family-oriented path, and instead chose to live a more independent lifestyle.