"I got to look at non-threatening, clean-cut guys," Merritt said. Toronto-born Scott Merritt, who posed for Playgirl in 2003 and was chosen by readers as Playgirl's 30th Anniversary Man, told The Advocate that, before he came out, Playgirl was just what he needed. Of course, it turns out that Playgirl did have a robust gay male readership. I actually find ads for Calvin Klein perfume with beautiful couples entwined on a windswept cliff more erotic. As one friend noted, "they aren't sexy without a backstory." Apparently just looking at a picture of a naked man out of context isn't "hot" for most women. And the amateur snapshots submitted by readers of their hairy selves tumescent and naked but for their tube socks are more one-night-stand nightmare than desirable fantasy.īut more important, pictures of naked men hanging out on full display speak more of engineering than intimacy.
From the casting to the lighting and decor, the atmosphere is just as cheesy as men's mags.
As a healthy, red-blooded straight female, I fancy men, but I have to admit that the photographs of fully erect hard-bodied "Campus Hunks 2008" sproinging off the pages of Playgirl's swan song print issue (it will continue online) are more of a turnoff than an enticement. So why didn't Playgirl matter to us?įirst, there was always the suspicion that Playgirl was a gay men's magazine in disguise.
The idea was to fight women's objectification and empower women's sexual liberation with a little objectification of our own - a key notion to our "Free to Be You and Me" generation, and one that fuelled the hardly insignificant career of another smart, liberated woman of our time named Madonna. Playgirl was founded in 1973 as a feminist response to men's magazines like Penthouse and Playboy. Truth be told, none of us thought about it much, let alone pored over it in the privacy of our boudoirs. In our dim recollection of Playgirl as a rather "limp" effort, the news that the magazine had been featuring naked erections since 1980 came as a surprise. None of us could recall anybody who ever became famous after posing in Playgirl, the way Playboy centrefolds did. Burt bared all but the family jewels for Helen Gurley Brown's Cosmopolitan in April, 1972, a full year before Playgirl's debut. This admission was then almost universally followed by nostalgia for the "witty," "hairy," "iconic seventies" centrefold of a cigarillo-smoking Burt Reynolds naked on a bearskin rug - a cheering image to be sure, although it never appeared in Playgirl. I have to admit that my first thought upon hearing that the current issue of Playgirl magazine will be its last was: "Is it still around?" The response was only reinforced by a quick poll of my smart, liberated lady friends, none of whom had come across one in years.
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