Thinking about Playboy

Hugh Hefner died at the age of 90-something. He was many things, many of them terrible. But I'm not talking about him, rather about the magazine he created.

I've heard people say Playboy went where liberal politicians of the era did not. It took enlightenment principles and applied them to sex. In court case after court case, sex was brought out of the taboo and made just another part of life.

In 1990 and 91, we had a Playboy subscription. I don't remember why. I found it interesting. The centerfolds and pictorals were the least interesting part of the magazine. The fiction was all right, but nothing stuck. The only article I remember all these years later was Christopher Durang's screed about Disneyland.

What interested me was the idea that an urbane man knew things.
He knew the difference between an Italian and an English suit. He knew why handmade loafers were better than Payless. He could groom himself, in an era when scruff and schlub seemed to have taken over, and he looked good. He knew which tie knot was appropriate to which suit, occasion and face size. Looking good, smelling nice, it was all part of the gig.

He was just as good at home. He decorated sparsely, but with nice clean lines. And if it wasn't new, it wasn't curb picked and ratty with an endtable made of porno vids. He picked up after himself (nobody wants to bring a pretty girl home to a dump). He could cook at least one half-way impressive meal, the better to seduce you, my dear. He knew wines and scotch and could mix a mean martini or cosmo, whichever the lady liked.

He drove a nice car, not a beater with beer cans in the back. He could talk about books and movies and art and music, politics and current events. He had interests other than sports and video games, because he knew women would want to talk about these things and not listen to a play-by-play recap of the last Superbowl. He could dance, and give a good lead to his partner. He was good in bed, lasting as long as she needed him to.

Everything was geared to the lifestyle, living the good life, and women were one more accessory, like the Hugo Boss suit, the Tag Heuer watch, the Grey Goose vodka.

Objectifying as hell to the women involved, true, being just lifestyle accouterments, as interchangeable as the Bill Blass ties.

But it made us want to be that guy, to learn to dance, to cook, to shave and do our hair. It encouraged us to learn to wear shirts and ties as opposed to t-shirts and jeans, to learn to coordinate our wardrobe and look good. It made us want to be interesting, and good looking.

Most of us would never have the money to go whole hog, but we could at least know not to sew buttons onto our secondhand French cuffs, but to buy cufflinks as well.

It said being sophisticated wasn't just for gay guys, a stereotype Queer Eye for the Straight Guy would later exploit.

Our fathers grew up, learning to dress and dance and drink properly. My generation absorbed some of it. My sons and those in their thirties are acquiring their pictures of naked ladies online, without the accompanying lifestyle stuff, and they're not learning that you have to do stuff to make women interested in you. We're trying to teach that at home. (One son has a lady and I suspect the other may be asexual)

There are many ways to be classy and sophisticated. The best to be that way yourself, and not just as a way to impress women. But Playboy offered a roadmap for 50 years, for young men starting out into uncharted territory of adulthood, who needed to know things their fathers thought they should have gotten by osmosis.