Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America. Elizabeth Fraterrigo. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009. 320 pp.
Hugh Hefner’s Playboy, founded in 1953, has been subjected to extensive analysis and criticism from the likes of feminist scholar Andrea Dworkin, the new journalism of Gay Talese, and Hefner biographer Steven Watts. So, is there anything more to be said about this magazine? Fortunately for Elizabeth Fraterrigo, the answer is yes.
Fraterrigo, an assistant professor of history at Loyola University in Chicago, uses old issues of Playboy, newspaper articles, Hefner’s scrapbooks, letters, and an interview with Hefner himself to illuminate a transitional time in America when women were entering the workforce, demanding equal pay, and taking on roles once occupied solely by males. She argues convincingly that Playboy promoted a model of masculinity that emphasized bachelorhood, apartment-living, and pro-miscuity in opposition to the traditional 1950s ideal of marriage, two children, and a suburban house. At the same time, Fraterrigo argues that Hefner’s philosophy of uninhibited sexuality was also in line with mainstream society because the goal of “prolonged bachelorhood,” in Hefner’s opinion, was to “ultimately strengthen marital bonds.”
Where previously the typical consumer had been female, Hefner made male conspicuous consumption socially acceptable, a male consumerism that was individually oriented as opposed to “conservative,” family-oriented purchasing. Here Fraterrigo makes one of her strongest points when she says that “Hefner offered an optimistic vision that defined American citizenship in terms of the freedom to consume.” She challenges the conventional wisdom that Playboy’s biggest influence was on notions of sexuality, and posits that Playboy had just as great an effect on changing ideas of consumption and consumerism.
Playboy’s ideal masculine lifestyle was tied to consumption, she argues: Men who bought the right stuff — hi-fi stereos, leather armchairs, Rolex watches—could get the girl(s). Playboy’s assertions that clothes and other consumer goods made the man meshed nicely with post-World War II culture created by American advertisers. Playboy celebrated hedonism and changed spending patterns from purchasing for the whole family to individual buying.
To her credit, Fraterrigo resists the temptation to overstate Playboy’s influence. Although the magazine “played a catalytic role in the refashioning of gender roles and sexuality mores,” these changes were also caused by such larger societal movements as women entering the workplace and mass consumption.
Fraterrigo uses Hefner’s personal life as a mirror to the postwar society. In his 20s, Hefner followed the expected patterns of American culture: he married his college sweetheart and fathered two children before finding domestic life overly repressive; inspired by his work at Esquire and by other magazine publishers, he launched Playboy, an adult magazine that “borrowed heavily from the path breaking formula of Esquire in the 1930’s, which promoted a vision of upscale, masculine consumption and heterosexual vitality.” During the more affluent 1950s, Playboy succeeded because it pushed the boundaries of public discussions about sexuality, but it did not overstep them, Fraterrigo argues. This view of the magazine has been presented before by Talese and others, but Fraterrigo strengthens the case by relying on Hefner’s letters to his photographers, in which he gives them explicit instructions to focus on the apparently innocent girls next door who were sexy but not sleazy—“fresh, young things in bedroom and bath.”
More original is Fraterrigo’s point that Playboy transformed the perception of bachelorhood as a failure of manhood to an enviable social position. Because Hefner advocated extramarital sex, and more important, that good girls “gave it up,” bachelorhood suddenly became extremely attractive. Because Hefner claimed that bachelorhood was but a prelude to marriage, and in fact strengthened marriage, his ideas were not all that radical.
Although Hefner railed against puritanical ideas of sexuality, Fraterrigo argues that he espoused the puritanical work ethic in his magazine. Working hard was important because it allowed men to consume luxury goods, which in turn attracted women and were satisfying in their own right.
Another strong point of the book is Fraterrigo’s discussion of Playboy’s reassertion of masculine space. As women and children increasingly went to public amusements, previously masculine spaces became feminized. In reaction to this trend, Playboy advocated for the bachelor pad in full-color spreads, featuring details of room designs and floor plans, and promoted its own key clubs that allowed men to fraternize in the presence of scantily clad bunnies. Many of the men who lusted after the bachelor pads and bunnies were married, and the imagined male space was as much about fantasy as were the centerfolds, she claims. Men, living in the feminized suburbs, longed for the realm of the masculinized city.
Eroticizing daily life, and working life in particular, was another goal of Playboy. She illustrates this brilliantly, using a pictorial from a June 1958 issue in which a Playboy office girl is shown wearing a sheer-to-the-ankles negligee and posing in front of a bookshelf and hi-fi stereo. Thus, the workplace is seen as an environment ripe for sex. Tellingly, the woman was not an executive “compet[ing] with men for personal advancement and success in the business world.” Women in the Playboy world could be portrayed as employed, she points out, but only in subservient positions.
Ultimately, what led to Playboy’s waning popularity in the 1970s was that American culture caught up to the values of sexual liberation. Not only did many Americans accept sexual freedom, but the counterculture also rejected the consumerism that was central to Playboy’s ethos. Fraterrigo emphasizes the feminist opposition to the magazine because of the objectification of female bodies, but she never quite explains why the 1980s, with its resurgent consumerism, didn’t bring back a renewed interest in Playboy.
HALLIE LIEBERMAN
University of Wisconsin-Madison