“Their premise is simple: by identifying with the absent man, a viewer can enter the scene.”
“As Hefner put it in a letter to Russ Meyer (director of Faster, Pussycat! Kill Kill!), the ideal centerfold is one in which “a situation is suggested, the presence of someone not in the picture.””
“The goal was to transform “a straight pinup into an intimate interlude, something personal and special.” Playboy readers are meant to be participants, not voyeurs.”
“The Playboy centerfold was a world away from the European ideal of a sexually-sophisticated temptress. Hefner’s girls were always girls, first of all, or bunnies— not women. There was no knowing gleam in a centerfold’s eye.”
“By packaging the photos with cosmopolitan content (stories, interviews), Hefner hoped that sex and culture would seep into each other by dint of their page-to-page proximity.”
“A taste for babes, he claimed, was just as fine a taste to cultivate as one for Scotch, fast cars or sharp suits (all of which Playboy advertised).”
“When these items appeared as props in the centerfold layouts, their connection to a stupendous sex life was visually underscored. Of all the lifestyle accessories Playboy celebrated, a bunny was the easiest to enjoy vicariously.”
“In many ways, the Playboy founder seems a person specifically bred to be the subject of a biography. We learn that he was inspired by The Fountainhead and Jay Gatsby. In Mr. Playboy we get the story of a man obsessed with crafting his own story. The biographer’s instinct to mythologize is inverted as Watts goes about politely demystifying (or complicating) Hefner’s gilded self-conceptions.”
“Throughout his biography, Watts regards Hefner as a sort of human Richter scale attuned to the subterranean desires of American males. It is this instinct, combined with a right-place/right-time circumstance, to which Watts attributes Playboy‘s success.”
“What Hefner wanted, in his words, was “a pleasure primer styled to the masculine taste.” The quote is revealing. It nods to Playboy’s instructional quality and to Hefner’s belief that a man might become his ideal self. In Hefner’s terms, masculine taste is a single and definable force.”
“As Watts puts it, Hefner “edited Playboy for himself.” He was a work-obsessed, bunny-centric monomaniac, the “editor, publisher, and, at the same time, audience” of the magazine.”
“The act of unfolding the spread, like undressing a girl, was meant to give the reader a private sensation. Just him and her; no politics, judgments, or restrictions—none of the things involved in a public discourse about sex. Such things have always been excluded from Playboy. They are too complicated.”