Hi I’m Robyn.

For those of you who don’t know me or have perhaps stumbled upon this project as a result of it being shared by friends (Hi friends) or out of morbid curiosity, I am a recent University graduate who got themselves into student debt in order to write 10,000 words on what can only be described as science fiction porn.

Which I guess lends itself quite nicely to my current project, exploring the literary history of what is widely regarded as the most iconic and famous pornographic media titan in the world. Playboy.

Here is where I lay out my massive disclaimer that I am 1. Not affiliated with Playboy in anyway and 2. Do not endorse the actions of Hugh Hefner. I am merely just a girl, seeking the answer to one of life’s greatest mysteries: Can you ACTUALLY read Playboy just for the articles?

Before I go into the scope of the project itself, what it will entail and what I hope to get out of it, I thought I’d give a brief run-down of my personal history with Playboy and what inspired me to read hundreds of stories from a defunct men’s lifestyle magazine.

I grew up in the early 2000’s, a time rife with reality tv, handbag dogs and what I am going to call the Playboy renaissance. Unbeknownst to a preteen Robyn, Hugh Hefner at the time was living it up in the Playboy mansion with his myriad of blonde girlfriends and enough smoking jackets to clothe an army of OAPS. My exposure to Playboy was not through The Girls Next Door (I will come to this later) nor the television ads they ran advertising various bunny branded ventures, but through the decoration of a friend’s bedroom.

It seems nefarious looking back, but in the early oughts it was very common for girls barely even 13 to deck out their bedroom in pink and leopard print Playboy vomit straight from the back pages of the Argos catalogue. I remember walking into the bedroom of a classmate and seeing massive plush bunny heads all over her bunny print bedsheets and a sparkly bunny head lava lamp and bottles of bunny head branded perfume. At the time I thought it was a cute character, like Hello Kitty, but when I raised this to my parents, I remember getting the impression that it was something different, something not for me. Like 18 rated films or smoking, and I was instantly extremely confused as to why a girl my age was allowed to have her bedroom decorated this way when I wasn’t even allowed to watch Evil Dead yet.

I suppose I could go on here about the marketing of Playboy. And how its merchandise was targeting children through its colours and patterns, position in the cultural zeitgeist and its place in the Argos catalogue amongst the Groovy Chick bedspreads, but I am woefully unqualified and the 2000’s was long ago. I’m sure that battle has already been fought. However this close call with the collared rabbit left an impression on me and as such I became aware of the grown-ups around me joking about hiding copies of Playboy or buying issues as gag gifts along size boxes of man-sized Kleenex.

Playboy began to become something I was vaguely aware of as I entered adulthood. The porn magazine. The creepy old man publicly practising polygamy (Queue old ladies clutching their pearls). The phrase “I read them for the articles” when a man is challenged about having an issue under his bed, because God forbid anyone enjoy sex. But then Hef died, and I began seeing articles online about the women that had lived with him in the mansion over the years.

Holly Madison who had previously released a memoir detailing her experience as Hefener’s “main” girlfriend in the mid 2000’s, came up frequently in interviews on social media as she had starred in the reality television show The Girls Next Door which followed Hefer’s then three girlfriends and their lives at the mansion. So, like any nosy person, I brought her book and read it in the space of a few hours. I. couldn’t. put. it. down.

The atmosphere she describes is cult-like and I couldn’t believe the praise this man was getting despite all these women who had spoken out against him. I binged watched The Girls Next Door, comparing what I was seeing to Holly’s descriptions in her memoir. I began to devour documentaries about Playboy and listen to podcasts from former Bunnies and girlfriends alike trying to get an insight into how this man can be so adored and yet be such an asshole.

What I eventually learnt was that Hugh Hefner was a horrible abusive, manipulative man, who also was so integral to pop culture. He campaigned for LGBTQ rights and challenged segregation openly during the 60s and gave space for thinkers with alternative ideas a place to publish their thoughts and findings therefore making counterculture and liberal thinking increasingly accessible.

It was quite the tactic, come for the boobs, stay for the articles talking about decriminalising marijuana or the interviews with civil rights leaders or the science fiction icon’s thinly veiled socialist utopia. Playboy helped make Tv shows, films, philosophies, and counter cultures. For better or for worse, he helped shape massive socio-political movements through the articles in his porn magazine, and as such will perhaps live on in infamy for years to come.

While my intention is to prove with this project that Playboy as a publication had, and still has merit as a vessel for literature, this is not to say that its status as a pornographic magazine is not also extremely valid. Although Hef’s body standards when applied to me, a plus sized, tattooed and decidedly not blond woman, would gain me little more than perhaps a “D” rating on a polaroid somewhere in his mansion, that is not to say that Playboy didn’t contribute to the acceptance of sex in mainstream media and that pornography isn’t valid when it is safe sane and consensual.

I will not be discussing Hefner’s misdeeds and crimes, but I suggest if this is something you are interested in, checking out any of Holly Maddison’s projects, in particular her new podcast with Girls Next Door co-star Bridget Marquardet, Girls Next Level and watching the documentary The Secrets of Playboy.

Over the course of this project, I intend to read all the fiction published in the 690 issues put out since the magazine started in 1953. I will be highlighting and reviewing key pieces and discussing the socio-political context of the time they were published as well as what material they were printed alongside and the history of the magazine itself.

I will be writing up my thoughts and feelings in blog posts that consolidate my findings for each year and then an overview of trends in genre, author identity, and themes for each decade overall. I will be tracking the diversity of the authors published on various criteria and commenting on why I believe certain stories were chosen to be published at certain times, why certain authors were serialised and how they interact with the image of Playboy as a lifestyle.

So, get out your man size Kleenex (for me to gently weep into because I’ll have to read AT LEAST 10 medieval literature translations in the first decade) and follow me down this rabbit hole and into the 1950s where it all began.

XoXo Robyn

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References :

• I Playboy : https://www.iplayboy.com
• The Girls Next Door. Created By, Kevin Burns & Hugh Hefner, Creators. E!, 2005-2009
• Madison, Holly. Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny. Dey Street Books, 2015.
• Madison, Holly & Marquardt, Bridget. Hosts. Girls Next Level . 2022- https://open.spotify.com/show/4JstWABabZk3fLty7Rhmyt
• Secrets of Playboy. Produced by, Dolores Gavin, executive producer. A&E, 2022