The topic for my April blog is who Hugh
Hefner is and what his contributions to society were. Hugh Hefner was born in
Chicago, Illinois on April 9, 1926 and he transformed the adult entertainment
industry by his publication of “Playboy.” In the early 1950’s Hefner worked as
a promotional copywriter for a major magazine corporation in Chicago called
Esquire. This company was a racy publication for men that transformed into a
redefined periodical that included articles on everything from men’s fashion to
literary works. Hefner left Esquire in 1953, because he was denied a five
dollar raise and made his decision to start his own publication. During the
1950’s America was trying to recover from about thirty years of war and
economic depression. Many Americans turned to Playboy magazine and the magazine
was proved to be a solution to the sexual repression of the era. When making
this magazine, Hugh Hefner wanted to differentiate from the other “manly” magazines
out there at this time. He decided that he would try to appeal to the more
intellectual male, as opposed to magazines such as outdoors-style. His magazines
included nudity of women, but instead of associating them with prostitution, he
portrayed them as classy and didn’t objectify them.[1]
I believe Hefner takes a risk in expressing these magazines during this time
when sex was not publicly accepted. I find Hefner makes the right decision in
creating Playboy, because he made a multimillion dollar corporation and
expanded it further by showing films and writing books. One reason he created
Playboy was to attack moralistic American anti-sexuality and anti-eroticism.
After starting Playboy, Hefner
wanted to instate a philosophy he called the “Playboy Philosophy.” This was an
evolving manifesto on politics and governance that adopted Hefner’s fundamental
beliefs about the nature of women and men. This philosophy also called for the
reasoned discourse on the truths of human sexuality. Despite him trying to
promote the philosophy, the pictures of nude women were what ultimately sold
the magazine. By 1956 Playboy had passed rival magazine Esquire, and by 1959
was selling nearly 1 million copies a month. By the 1960s Hugh Hefner had
become the persona for Playboy magazine. He started hanging out with the wealthy,
and chased a wide range of intellectual pursuits. As the magazine became more
and more public Hefner gladly portrayed himself as the charismatic and iconic
spokesperson for the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Besides just the magazine,
Hefner’s enterprise built hotel resorts, modeling agencies, produced films,
books, a record company, and for a short time even two short-run television
series. Then in 1965 he founded the Playboy Foundation to provide grants to
nonprofit groups researching human sexuality and protesting censorship.[2]
Hugh Hefner made an impact on the American society during the twentieth century
and still does to this day by publishing Playboy and expressing his ideas on
sex in America.
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