Category Archives: media

Using Playboy to Peek into Feminist History

Debbie says:’

Gloria Steinem as Playboy Bunny with feminist captioning

Susan Braudy’s long piece at Jezebel, “Up Against the Centerfold: What It Was Like to Report on Feminism for Playboy in 1969″ is (constructively) less about Playboy than it is about her own feminist trajectory.

When you read these quotations, or Braudy’s whole essay, please bear in mind that, although Roxanne Dunbar(-Ortiz) gets one passing mention, it is entirely about white women, and thus replicates the great failing of contemporary feminism throughout most of its history (Laurie and I have a post in process about this).

Braudy brings in a surprise early:

Jim Goode, Playboy’s articles editor, … explained that Playboy wanted an objective account of the entire spectrum of the brand new “women’s lib” movement. “These women have important things to say, and I want our readers to hear them,” he said. “Let yourself go. Write anything you like but don’t pass judgment. Be fair.”

He concluded, “Write in a tone that’s amused if the author is amused, but never snide.”

He was more open-minded than Braudy was at that time.

At meeting after meeting I heard a wide range of women speak passionately or woodenly about their “women’s rage.” They hurled questions: Why did men insist they were “helping” a woman do her job if they did housework? Should women compete for power outside the home like men? Would women ever be as free to enjoy sex as men?

Yet I wasn’t ready to make the leap from anecdotes to political analysis. Of course I saw my husband as my superior intellectually and socially; that’s largely why I was drawn to him. I hadn’t consciously dared to resent this. I’d been given many votes of no confidence by men trusted with my higher education. My philosophy professor had given me an A before he bought me a chocolate chip ice cream cone and advised me to quit grad school and get married.

Braudy interviewed Ti-Grace Atkinson:

I said I loved my husband and I would have married him eventually, graduate school or no. But I had suffered during the early years of our marriage because my husband seemed so confident in his identity and work as a Yale graduate student of English, whereas I had no goal, except the marriage. “I pity you,” she said tears brimming her eyes. “How can you love the oppressor?”

… she added, though her manner belied the harshness of her words, that since I was taking advantage of the feminist movement to further my ambitions, I should expect little sympathy from her when Playboy put me out with the trash. 

The article takes us through meeting with Gloria Steinem (pictured above as a younf Playboy Bunny in a nightclub) and marching with Betty Friedan. Steinem recently made me and my younger colleagues furious by making  inexcusable comments about young women’s role in the current political process, which she has since retracted.)

While Jim Goode liked Braudy’s article, the story was not over:

I chatted with Nat Lehrman, the associate publisher and self-described “sex editor.” He (joked about castrating women, nervously jingling coins in his pants pockets.

My article had a couple snags, he said. By building my story around three central figures—Betty Friedan, Robin Morgan and Roxanne Dunbar—I’d been too sympathetic to “crazies” within the movement. Lehrman had penciled in a few suggestions which he said pointed up the differences between “the radical crazies and the moderates.” He apologetically read me his “minor” corrections. “It’ll be a snap,” he coaxed.

But within a few hours the experience of debating a Playboy muckety-muck about the existence of the clitoral orgasm lost its charm. I started to suspect our fights were turning Mr. Lehrman on. I was a soft-core interlude.

Hugh Hefner’s vast anti-woman diatribes followed Lehrman’s titillation. The article was cancelled, Shelley Schlicker was fired for trying to copy Hefner’s memos and get them to the press. Read Braudy’s whole piece for fascinating details.

Both Braudy’s trajectory and Playboy‘s panic are completely in line with their times. The article illuminates some of the tensions and complications of the women’s movement in the second half of the 20th century. I think it will be of interest both to people like me who remember those times, and people for whom the article is history rather than memory.

Dear John Goodman: No Sympathy Here

Debbie says:

Let’s shed a tear for actor John Goodman (actually, I’m a huge fan of his work), who has apparently never thought about the fact that a shoe feels different on the other foot:

At a social gathering, Goodman, an admittedly huge fan of Wiig’s work, approached the “Bridesmaids” star mid-conversation and it didn’t go so well.

side by side photos of the two stars

“She was talking to somebody else, and I was just — I think she’s so great, and the social barriers broke down and I interrupted the conversation,” he explained to Stern. “And I would just hate for somebody to do that to me. And she goes, ‘Yeah, I’ll talk to you in a minute.’ [makes sound of bomb dropping] It was like the Atom. I shrunk down to Atom size. … I really like her, and it was embarrassing, so I’ll never speak to her again.” 

Melissa McEwen at Shakesville deconstructs this beautifully:

He saw her talking to someone else and interrupted her, which he would hate for somebody to do to him, but did it anyway. And instead of immediately dropping her conversation with someone else, which they might have considered pretty rude, she told him she would talk to him in a minute.

That actually doesn’t sound very terrible to me!

And I suspect if that had been the whole story, it wouldn’t have sounded very terrible to anyone else, either.

But Goodman went on to explain that her failure to immediately stop her conversation and give him her full and undiluted attention on his schedule made him feel small and insignificant.

You can write this off to his movie/TV star status, which means that he has way less opportunity to learn how to deal with someone blowing him off for five minutes. Or you can say, as McEwen does perfectly accurately, that this is simple misogyny and male privilege at work, that Goodman does this to people all the time without a moment’s thought to whether or not it hurts them, and then can’t tolerate it.

The third piece, however, is Goodman’s size. If he were not famous, he’d be fat enough to lose at least some of his otherwise automatic male privilege, and he’d be very familiar with conventionally beautiful women (especially ones who are movie/TV stars themselves) blowing him off, not just for five minutes, but permanently. Quite likely, he would live in constant awareness that any conversation with a conventionally beautiful woman was an insult risk, just as everyone in a one-down position lives with the constant awareness that any interaction with someone with more power or privilege is an insult risk, or worse.

When he takes this minor interaction, which could so easily be framed as, “Look, Kristen Wiig is polite enough to finish one conversation before starting the next,” as an irretrievable insult, he isn’t just setting Wiig up for dozens of articles calling her out as rude, and he isn’t just revealing himself as having a pathetic need for immediate gratification, he’s also distancing himself from people who look like him, telling them that he believes in his right to expect something they can’t even imagine expecting.

John Goodman, you have experienced a Teachable Moment. I’ll write out the lessons for you:

1) she (and everyone else) has every right to finish her conversation (or her life) without talking to you;

2) if you learn how to deal with minor human interactions without drama, your life will be better;

3) if you weren’t famous, this would be an everyday occurrence. Be kind to the people who have to face much worse with their morning coffee.

P.S. to Kristen Wiig: Please don’t make a public “apology,” for doing absolutely nothing wrong.