When Playboy Made It Big

PLAYBOY MAGAZINE USED to be the contraband men of all ages hid in their sock drawers.

- Lenore Skenazy

Now it might as well be another pair of socks.

It’s hard to get excited by a nudie magazine anymore—especially one without any nudes. Since March 2016, Playboy no longer features naked ladies, which is kind of like Hershey’s still selling almonds without the chocolate.

But props where props are due: It’s unlikely we would be as blasé as we are today about sex, porn, and even women’s lib if it weren’t for Hugh Hefner and his crazy 1953 creation.

Hef was a frustrated cartoonist at the time, working in the Esquire subscription department because that was the closest he could get to the world of publishing. When his request for a $5 a week raise got turned down, he decided to strike out on his own. Somehow he pulled together $10,000 and prepared to launch a racy new magazine: Stag.

Fortunately for him, the name was already taken. So instead he called it Playboy. The first edition featured a centerfold (a word we wouldn’t even have without him!) dubbed “Sweetheart of the Month.” In the very next issue, the sweetheart was rechristened a “Playmate.” As the author Julie Keller has mused, “There is a vast ideological gap between the words.”

There sure is. The former harkened back to Mary Pickford, courtship, a-settin’ on the velveteen settee. The latter is some one you play with. It’s fun, but it’s not forever.

Thus began the smashing of taboos.

The genius of Playboy was not that it published naked young ladies. There were other ways to get your grubby paws on those pictures even then. As