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What Hefner was doing was trying to take porn mainstream. The jokes about "I only read Playboy for the articles" riffed off that; he was presenting an entire package for the sophisticated (or wannabe-sophisticate) man. This wasn't porn, it was erotica. You weren't reading Playboy to get your rocks off (was the pretence), the Playmates were part of the ensemble of what an intelligent, worldly-wise man experienced. That was also the point of the clubs, there were "gentleman's clubs", with keys for members, and the image again was of the worldly, sophisticated man - a roué perhaps, but not a guy in a raincoat in a seedy porn cinema jerking off. Selling the "James Bond" image, which is why the mansion and Hef in his smoking jacket was also an important part of the image: this was what ambitious young men in the 60s and 70s USA were aiming for, with the booming post-war economy and possibilities of all sorts opening up and the Sexual Revolution at hand, or could be persuaded into thinking they were all part of, as Playboy consumers: taste, wealth, an urbane lifestyle their parents didn't have, and hot young women willing to be friendly and sexually available but not as hookers or paid escorts. You were all liberated and rewriting the conventions of society.
Of course, the seedy porn cinemas had never gone away and the likes of Hustler came along with a completely different and more cynical, more pragmatic philosophy: no pretence about art or erotica, more graphic and hardcore, to eat Playboy's lunch, and nowadays you can get anything you want on the Internet.
But as you say, for a while there it was the point where fantasy was presented in an attainable form.
See that's where I think the framing confuses us, Hustler and Penthouse and Playboy fought wars over pubic hair and hardcore porn, but that didn't ultimately impact Playboy's empire overly much, because Playboy's real money came from the clubs and the casinos. The decline and fall of the brand had more to do with changing tastes in night clubs (I know almost no men my age who belong to private membership clubs with bars, that was far more common in the 60s), the failed Atlantic City Casino venture, and the nature of overexposing a brand by licensing your logo plastered on every shitty T shirt and cheap silver necklace for sale on any New Jersey boardwalk.
Playboy magazine was a modest business without the accoutrement that actually brought in revenue. Hustler and Penthouse never compared by that metric.
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It's rather amazing how successful Hef was at this. Even women that don't like their husbands' porn consumption find Playboy's brand tolerable, maybe even civilizing.
A GF bought me a subscription to Playboy for my birthday actually, back when it was a thing.
My wife actually has more love for the Playboy mystique than I do. She grew up watching The Girls Next Door reality show, and being that hot, having one's breasts Certified, was a kind of mark of honor. Not one that she actually aspired to, but it had a certain cache to it.
I think most women consider the idea of various forms of sex work as a fantasy in much the same way that most men vaguely fantasize about violent crime, or of running off to work on an oil rig.
Whoa
Violent crime is one thing but who dreams of working on an oil rig? It's not even that outdoorsy, you're not in the forest or on the land.
I imagine the fantasy is a job that's hard, but very rewarding, with a side of camaraderie.
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It's interesting how fully Playboy has shifted from "softcore porn for the discerning man" to "women's fashion and lifestyle brand." The only people I've ever met who have spent money on Playboy products are women. When was the last time the majority of their revenue was generated by male consumers?
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