Larger text
Smaller text
Print
E-mail
Playboy for sale
Tom Purcell, a freelance writer, lives in Mt. Lebanon. He can be reached via e-mail. You can also visit him at www.TomPurcell.com.
It was one of the chief reasons kids built shacks in the early 1970s: to hide their stash of Playboy magazines.
Playboy was pretty racy fare back then and any kid whose mother caught him with one might not survive into adulthood. And so we built shacks.
We'd walk miles to the new housing projects and scavenge supplies. We'd build shacks in the woods and secure them with locks.
Once the shack was built, kids had two goals in life: secure whatever Playboys they were able to acquire and raid other kids' shacks to swipe their Playboys.
That is how I came upon the famous Barbi Benton issue.
Another kid two blocks away -- I didn't know him well, but we'd later become best friends -- had built a shack with his group of pals. Despite it having a big Master lock on the door, one yank caused the door's hinges to fall off.
When I went inside, I hit the mother lode: There sat a stack of six or seven Playboys, including the coveted Barbi Benton issue.
I got to thinking about the old shack days recently after learning that Playboy Enterprises is for sale.
As it goes, the magazine's circulation is in heavy decline. The company is losing lots of dough. As a result, its stock is tanking.
Money has gotten so tight, says the U.K. Telegraph, that old Hugh Hefner, the magazine's founder, has had to lay off household staff. To generate new revenue, anyone can now attend the famous Playboy Mansion parties -- so long as he isn't too proud to pay.
What's worse, Hef's three blond-haired girlfriends -- the ones featured in cable TV's "The Girls Next Door" -- have ditched the mansion. They've taken advantage of new opportunities and are now spending time with much younger men.
And I thought those girls liked the 83-year-old Hef for who he was -- I never expected they might use his fame to advance their own careers.
It's a shame to see the old coot, still kicking around in his silk bathrobe, looking as tired and unhip as his old magazine.
Sure, he had a heck of a run. For a spell, in the '50s, he had been living the way most families lived -- he had a wife, two kids and a modest home in the suburbs -- but he left his wife to fulfill his adolescent fantasies.
He borrowed dough and bought some nude photos of Marilyn Monroe. He launched Playboy. Apparently, men liked the idea of looking at beautiful women without their duds on. The magazine was a hit.
To be sure, his magazine was groundbreaking in its day. Its interviews with the movers and shakers of that time did make for good reading.
And, true, he has become an American icon of sorts. He did achieve tremendous material wealth -- he did have his share of influence over his times. According to the Telegraph, for instance, he believes he had a central role in advancing the sexual revolution.
He surely played a role in helping America overcome its repressive ways -- how things were before young women routinely got excessively drunk and eagerly flashed their parts for a "Girls Gone Wild" cameraman. Hef really did live an adolescent fantasy life -- he's still living one.
Now that his last batch of girlfriends has moved on to bigger things, the old coot is auditioning other young beauties to fill the void. Lucky for him, there will always be other young beauties waiting in line -- so long as he can hang on to enough clout and dough to make it worth their while.
Some analysts report that due to declining revenues, Playboy Enterprises is worth about $100 million. Hef wants $300 million, though. He needs that much, apparently, to maintain his lifestyle.
But one thing is for certain: If kids are still building shacks these days, I doubt they worry much about locking up their Playboys.
Thanks, in part, to old opportunists like Hef -- he became rich attacking our old moralities and helped begin the coarsening of our culture -- today's parents have plenty more to worry about than Playboy magazine.
