(09-28-2017, 06:22 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: Hef was indeed the Godfather of the Sexual Revolution. His passing seems to mark the final nail in that revolution's coffin. There are many who feel that we are unlikely to have another such revolution even if a proof-positive cure for AIDS is found. Yet statisically we have a greater risk of being killed on the highways.
He filled a need. Maybe the Pill did more by allowing sex without procreation, and thus the recreational sex that many still consider a great affront to "nature" or the Divine Presence.
The centerfolds were slick art. Yes, the unclothed female body can be beautiful, as is well established in painting and art photography. Hef was more artist than pornographer; one felt less guilty with Playboy than with cheap imitators. I won't go into great details about how he exposed or did not expose what shocked prudes of the time, but I can say this: if you looked at the parts of the female anatomy usually covered in underwear on his centerfold model, you also looked at her face. Did he put more attention on the female's hairdo? That may have separated him from the much-despised pornographers of the time.
Playboy sought to have some intellectual attraction. Its articles were often worth reading. After all, sex did not have to be stupid or disgusting, let alone solely for reproduction. Was he a male-chauvinist pig? Sure. He sold most men an unattainable fantasy. The harm isn't that men recognize the female body as the beauty that it is; the problem is that Hefner expanded a culture in which female youth was a commodity for exploitation by older men. Thus, go ahead and marry your high-school or college sweetheart, but when she loses her attractiveness marry someone else's potential college or high-school sweetheart around age 40. Then when you are 60 or so...
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.