Playgirl

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Playgirl

With its appearance on the stands in May 1973, Playgirl magazine became the first magazine for women to focus on men. Although Helen Gurley Brown's Cosmopolitan had featured the first nude male centerfold, Playgirl, first published by Douglas Lambert and edited by Marin Scott Milam, was more of a female counterpart to Playboy. While Cosmopolitan may have pushed at the far edges of women's magazines, Playgirl went over the line in its effort to bring a newly blossomed feminism to the realm of popular reading material. It desired to offer women "the good life," much as Playboy identified a way of life that encompassed the music their male readers listened to, the books they read, the cars they drove—and the women who fed their fantasies.

By the late 1990s, although Playgirl could boast a circulation of more than 500,000, this was still nowhere near the much larger circulation figures for Cosmopolitan and doesn't enter the sphere of circulation occupied by Playboy. Perhaps this is because of the fact that Playgirl always had trouble deciding what kind of magazine it wanted to be. Its fiction, although at times featuring such notable authors as Joyce Carol Oates and Margaret Atwood, rarely rose higher than romance novels and confession magazines, while Playboy's fiction often featured the top writers of the day, and it featured interviews with Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger, Warren Beatty, and Jane Fonda, to name a few. While aspiring to emulate Playboy, in its early years Playgirl periodically featured silly centerfolds, such as actor Rip Torn and Benji the dog. And on the nudity question, it wavered between the extremes of full frontal and none at all.

The magazine's lack of identity reflected the fact that women themselves were struggling to find and assert their identity during the 1970s and 1980s. Could a woman retain her femininity or did she have to ape a man to succeed in a man's world? Her wages were certainly arguing that she could not compete on equal terms with men. How could she aspire to "the good life" when her wages were often half that of her male counterpart? Women themselves were divided on the issues. Many continued to believe that husbands should work and wives should stay home and care for the family. To these women, working mothers meant bad mothers.

Another reason for the lack of clear focus in Playgirl was its publishing history. While the image of Playboy boss Hugh Hefner could offer men a vision of what the ultimate playboy was supposed to look like, Playgirl's original publisher was a man. Cosmopolitan and Ms. Magazine were both headed by strong feminists, able to commit themselves to the message they were proclaiming in the pages of their magazines. In 1986, Drake Publishers bought Playgirl and relocated to New York. They believed that women didn't want to see nude men, preferring traditional images of handsome men that they could fantasize about. This romanticized view of women's sexuality didn't go over well with the readers, and the change lasted less than a year before the full frontal nudity was back.

Further, Playgirl ignored a vocal part of the women's movement that decried the objectification of women in such magazines as Playboy and Penthouse. Many men and women argued that sexualizing women led to violent crimes such as rape. It was further argued that men's magazines objectified not only women but men as well, making men nothing more than the sex they were having. While many women's groups called for reform in men's magazines, Playgirl was pushing for what many considered equal depravity rather than equal rights. They thought that Playgirl actually weakened the arguments for the fair treatment of women.

Despite some of its rocky history, Playgirl earned a reputation for listening to what its readers wanted. When the first issue came out, centerfold Lyle Waggoner was featured in a cross-legged pose. Readers complained that Playgirl hadn't gone far enough. The next issue featured a fully revealed George Maharis. In 1986, it was the readers' responses to the withdrawal of nudity that convinced Drake Publishers to reintroduce male nudity in the magazine.

In the last years of the twentieth century, Playgirl —one voice in a myriad of women's magazines—remained the only women's magazine that regularly featured nude men. Deciding at last to be the only erotic magazine for women, Playgirl, in the words of their historical overview, now serves "to legitimize female sexuality and introduce women to the same provocative features and photographs men [have] been enjoying for years." While Playgirl may not have presented the fully fleshed-out vision of "the good life" that Playboy inspired, it has remained for many women the authority on female sexuality.

—Cheryl A. Smith