Word: playboyism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
WHEN HUGH HEFNER founded Playboy magazine in 1953, he did little to help foster the sexual revolution; instead, his radical publication helped stimulate the rise of consumerism while maintaining what was ultimately a "clean" sexual ethic. This is one of the more provocative arguments feminist author Barbara Ehrenreich puts forth in The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment, which offers a fresh approach to the battle of the sexes. Written with wit, style, and no small degree of social insight, this important book significantly challenges popular beliefs about the women's movement and the current anti...
...Whittle's gala announcement: "After 13 years, we have come back into the black." Established magazines, once they falter, are rarely able to turn around, and Esquire falls between two categories of periodicals, general interest and men's, that have been hit especially hard by reader defections. Playboy (circ. 4,250,000) and Penthouse (circ. 3,454,000) have each lost more than 12% in circulation; Esquire's nearest rival, GQ (for Gentlemen's Quarterly), is growing (circ. 558,000, up 7.5%) but has deliberately shifted from a clotheshorse consciousness to deal, like Esquire, with popular...
...TRAGIC DEATH of Playboy's 1980 Playmate Dorothy Stratten (masterfully depicted by Bob Fosse in his latest movie Star 80) could easily become ammunition for moralists, anti-capitalists, and anti-porn feminists; for at first glance it offers an indictment of the sexual and economic exploitation of women in American society. This would be unfortunate, however, because the issues raised by her case add up to a social dilemma which is too complex to be solved by simplistic thinking...
...anti-capitalist argument, interpreting Stratten's misfortunes as an inevitable result of capitalist exploitation, would focus on the Disneyland nature of Hefner's Playboy empire (as Fosse does) and on the insatiable appetite of a capitalist society for junk food, junk movies--in short, junk values. It would also point an accusing finger at the American propensity for materializing and objectifying life; through, for example, the starmaking machinery in New York and Los Angeles, which manufactures individuals into cardboard cutouts and then expresses shock when they age, bleed...
TOWARDS the end of his Star 80 review Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote, "The story of Dorothy Stratten is pathetic, but only another Playboy model might find it tragic." Anyone who sees the movie will detect the narrowness of his statement. During the last scene, when Dorothy removes her clothes and lamely offers herself to her lunatic husband/captor, actress Mariel Hemingway (who portrays her) virtually redefines the word "heartbroken": Her eyes and posture convey the sudden wisdom, tragic in its belatedness, of a naive individual who finally realizes that she has not been loved...