Playgirl! Before I knew it, a breathless commotion had erupted: mum, the stylist, the entire salon lunging to intercept my wandering, impressionable hands. Once, while idling at my mum’s hair appointment, I (a kid) casually reached for some reading material – a smooth men’s torso resting atop the magazine stack. However audacious, the Playgirl brand paled in size to that of Playboy, possibly muddied by concurrent gay-liberation forces: by not explicitly courting a male audience, the magazine seemed to reinforce a kind of glass closet.Īn early memory of mine illustrates the magazine’s contradictory allure. In lifting the veil on the disproportionately verboten “male nude” – packaging it in well-lit, passably artful centerfolds – the magazine challenged norms that the sexual revolution did not – namely ancient gender gaps vis-à-vis modesty, desire, and power. Sparked by a convergence of the sexual and women’s revolutions, Playgirl was in some ways ahead of its time.
Primarily targeted at straight, male eyes, this semi-mainstream pulp found a notable exception in Playgirl – the magazine of adult entertainment for women, launched in 1973.
National outlets like Playboy and Hustler disseminated varying degrees of erotica with record abandon. As old as cave paintings, “the nude” unsurprisingly exploded after the sexual revolution – reflecting our innate thirst in new and exciting ways.
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