At 'Playboy,' I wrote perfect words for perfect bods: Column

In 1997, my uncle, historian Richard Kluger, won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction for his book Ashes to Ashes, a history of the American tobacco wars of the 20th century. At the time, my brother Jeffrey was still celebrating the triumph of his best-seller, Apollo 13, which had been made into a blockbusting film. It was a good year for the family.

And yet I was conflicted. Indeed, on the day Uncle Dick’s Pulitzer was announced, I was buried in work at my desk at Playboy magazine, writing and rewriting the same essay as assigned to me by the magazine’s founder, Hugh Hefner. The topic? “The Blondeness of Pamela Anderson.” Sometimes life isn’t fair.

If you read any pictorial in Playboy from 1986 to 1999 (and, yes, I assure you, all of the pictorials were accompanied by words), chances are I wrote it. From “The Women of the Ivy League” to the “exclusive nudes” of Cindy Crawford to the random Playmate centerfold, I was your man on the street (or, more precisely, in the boudoir). Granted, I had other assignments at the magazine during my 13-year stint there, from editing the historic Playboy Interview to assigning and writing a variety of columns and features. But “girl copy” was my primary beat, and — my family’s journalistic accolades aside — I actually dug it. There were worse ways a thirtysomething, straight male could spend his day than looking at nudes of beautiful women.

'Playboy' to stop publishing nude photos

And so it is with a bit of melancholy that I read this week’s headlines announcing that Playboy will no longer feature nudity in its pages. That’s like reading that popcorn will no longer include corn. Or the pop.

The rationale for this decision is partially due to numbers. Having once enjoyed a circulation in excess of 5 million in the mid-'70s, Playboy has now withered to relatively paltry 800,000, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. That’s because the Boomers who fueled its astonishing half-century run are dying off; and subsequent generations — the Xers and the Millennials — have written off the magazine as a creaky, if not embarrassing, artifact of their parents’ (and grandparents’) youth. As for those who still need their regular fix of R- and X-rated eye candy, the Internet is happy to provide all the action they can ogle. For free.

But Playboy’s newfound demureness is also the result of a significant cultural transformation, not unlike the seismic one that announced its arrival in 1953. When the magazine first hit newsstands that December (Marilyn Monroe was both its covergirl and centerfold) it captivated the nation, even as it confounded it. As David Halberstam explained in his seminal book The Fifties, Hugh Hefner recognized that America was in the path of a hurricane of new societal freedoms, particularly those that related to gender and sexuality. The Kinsey Report. The Pill. And, later on, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique — each one signaling the first hormonal surges of what would ultimately become the sexual revolution.

“It was Hefner’s particular genius to know that it was now,” wrote Halberstam, “in this new era, going to be permissible to have an upscale, slick magazine of male sexual fantasies that customers might not be embarrassed to be seen buying — or even to leave out on their coffee tables.”

So Hef ran with his baby, and in the ensuing 60 years, Playboy would go on to delight its fans and infuriate its critics, in part because it had the audacity to publish first-class fiction (John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, David Foster Wallace, you name ‘em) and hard-nosed journalism alongside photos of smiling, naked models, which many feminists justifiably labeled objectifying.

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But even as he took hits from all corners, Hefner was — and remains — obsessed with staying true to his crusade for freedom. During my time at the magazine, we were required to write and report on the righteous battles women continued to wage as the century drew to a close — from the fight for reproductive rights to equal pay and equal say. At the same time, the company’s philanthropic arm would regularly lend support to its alleged enemies, contributing funds to such groups as the National Organization for Women, EMILY's List, Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL).

And that’s where things get ironic. It was this very conscientiousness that helped give birth to a new generation of young women (and men) who have successfully made the argument that Playboy’s time has passed — at least when it comes to pinups. It’s the reason that Maxim, that other “laddy mag,” has also recently shuttered its British print edition. And it’s the reason my daughters have sternly directed me to remove my back issues of Playboy from the living room shelf — and I have quietly acquiesced to that “request.”

It would be easy to make fun of Hugh Hefner — as some in the news media have already begun doing — for staying too long at the party. To the contrary, I say here’s a tip of the bunny ears to a guy who’s worn his pajamas to work for 62 years and, in the process, helped make the culture a little more grown-up.

As for the “girl next door” who will no longer grace the gatefold of Hef’s “Entertainment for Men” monthly, what can I say? Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.

Bruce Kluger is a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors.

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