Hugh Hefner

Saturday

Mitchell Jackson

There’s more to Pamela Anderson than Playboy and sex tapes

Pamela Anderson cites Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces as the template for her memoir, Love, Pamela. The pop literary critic’s analysis of mythical heroes famously inspired George Lucas’s Star Wars. As Lucas deconstructs the heroes of western literature, Anderson dismantles the banal Madonna/whore template that has dominated tabloid coverage of her life. Unfortunately, Anderson supplants one boring motif with an even more tedious one: the archetype of the celebutante victim.

Pamela

Friday

Amber Duke

Playboy’s #MeToo problem isn’t Hugh Hefner — it’s porn

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, who died in 2017 at the age of ninety-one, is facing renewed allegations of sexual misconduct thanks to the new A&E documentary Secrets of Playboy. Former Playmates said they were subjected to cult-like conditions at the Playboy Mansion. Hefner reportedly plied them with drugs and alcohol to get them to participate in wild sexual activities, and threatened them with revenge porn if they ever tried to leave the mansion. "I watched him, I watched his game. And I watched a lot of girls go through [the Playboy Mansion] gates looking farm-fresh, and leaving looking tired and haggard," former Hef girlfriend Sondra Theodore told the New York Post.  How anyone could be surprised by this is beyond me.

playboy hugh hefner

Wednesday

Bridget Phetasy

Playboy of the western world

During my years writing for Playboy, I never got to meet Hugh Hefner, although I always wanted to. He was one of my heroes when I was just a young entrepreneur with big dreams of building a media empire. However, long before that, Hugh was an idol of mine during my teens because I actually did read Playboy for the articles. It’s how I learned everything I know about sex and men. I pored over every old edition I could find, educating myself as much as I could about the Playboy Philosophy and the American male psyche. Embedded in between the glossy photos of hi-res nipples were Hef’s politics. He championed civil rights, reproductive rights and was an advocate of the First Amendment. I dreamed of one day seeing myself in those sacred pages.

Playboy