Word: playboyism
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...remember when Playboy magazine was forbidden fruit - Eve and her apple in the Garden of Guilt. This was in the 50s, when everything priapic was prohibited, and when I was just grazing my teen years. Like a boy sidling up to the pharmacy counter to ask for, demand, his first condom, the 13-year-old Child Corliss sought out Playboy at distant drug stores, put my 50 cents in the palms of blind newsies. Before Playboy, the only magazines I had bought were comic books. Hugh M. Hefner had connived to introduced me both to the publishing industry...
...From the unslaked lust of millions like me, Hefner built an empire. He boldly expanded and accessorizing the magazine?s concept of ?entertainment for men? into a multimedia conglomerate. TV: he created and hosted two syndicated TV shows, ?Playboy Penthouse? and ?Playboy After Dark.? Books: Playboy Press published collections from the magazine and original material like Lenny Bruce?s ?How to Talk Dirty and Influence People.? Nightclub-restaurants: Playboy Clubs soon straddled the globe and franchised his centerfold Playmates into real live (but clothed) Bunnies. Movies: Playboy Productions financed Roman Polanski?s ?Macbeth? and Monty Python...
...With the January 2004 issue, Playboy has turned 50 - 15 months after the golden anniversary of Mad, eight months after TV Guide hit the half-century mark. All have fought mid-life crises so critical they could have been end-life crises. TV Guide, unable to cram 500 channels of listings into its pocket-size format, has seen its circulation (9 million) drop to less than half of its 1960s numbers. Mad, which long ago lost the monopoly on irreverent kid humor - where isn?t adolescent ribaldry nowadays? - sells only about 250,000 copies, a tenth as many...
...Playboy is surely the most robust of these golden-age magazines, its legacy the longest-lasting. Not only did the Bunny Book make a fortune and an empire for its founder and true mascot, Hugh M. Hefner, but it left a smudged thumbprint on American society. That?s because Hefner had more than a business model; he had a Philosophy, which he expounded in his magazine each month for more than a decade. He may have been after something more enlightened than an empire. A republic. Playboy?s Republic...
...past three decades Playboy has faced a raft of problems. The Clubs suffered financial embarrassments, lost their gaming licenses in some venues and are now closed. Playboy Productions never became the alternative movie studio Hefner hoped for; it produces softcore videos for pay cable. The 80s saddled Playboy with the challenge of home video, which made sex with moving bodies available on television. The 90s unleashed the Internet, which made sex accessible, nearly unavoidable, on the computer. Then there are the ?lad books,? including Maxim and FHM, which have taken the Playboy format with one exception - they keep some clothes...