{"id":1889,"date":"2014-06-06T09:00:26","date_gmt":"2014-06-06T14:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=1889"},"modified":"2017-06-01T00:50:10","modified_gmt":"2017-06-01T05:50:10","slug":"the-invention-of-the-playboy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/06\/06\/the-invention-of-the-playboy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Invention of the Playboy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n

In\u00a0Hearts of Men<\/a><\/em>, Barbara Ehrenreich talks about the launching of Playboy<\/a><\/em> in 1953 and how it forever changed how we thought about single men.<\/p>\n

At that time, a man who stayed single was suspected of homosexuality.\u00a0 The idea of being an unmarried heterosexual adult\u00a0of sound mind and body was totally foreign. \u00a0Hugh Hefner changed all of that by inventing a whole new kind of man, the playboy.\u00a0 The playboy stayed single (so as to have lots of ladies), kept his money for himself and his indulgences (booze\u00a0and\u00a0ladies), and re-purposed the domestic sphere (enter the snazzy bachelor pad full of booze and ladies).<\/p>\n

With this in mind, check out an attempt to attract advertising dollars\u00a0from a 1969 issue\u00a0(found at Vintage Ads<\/a>).\u00a0\u00a0It\u00a0nicely\u00a0demonstrates\u00a0Playboy<\/em>‘s marketing of a new kind of man, one who lives a free and adventurous life that is unburdened by a boring, dead-end job needed to support\u00a0a\u00a0wife and kids.<\/p>\n

Text:<\/p>\n

What sort of man reads Playboy? He’s an entertaining young guy happily living the good life. And loving every adventurous minute of it. One recipe for his upbeat life style? Fun friends and fine potables. Facts. PLAYBOY is read by one of out every three men under 50 who drink alcoholic beverages. Small wonder beverage advertisers invest more dollars in PLAYBOY issue per issue than they do in any other magazine. Need your spirit lifted? This must be the place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Today, we commonly come across the idea\u00a0that men are naturally<\/em> averse to being tied down, but Hefner’s project reveals that this was an idea that was invented quite recently and promulgated for profit.<\/p>\n

This post originally appeared in 2008.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday. In\u00a0Hearts of Men, Barbara Ehrenreich talks about the launching of Playboy in 1953 and how it forever changed how we thought about single men. At that time, a man who stayed single was suspected of homosexuality.\u00a0 The idea of being an unmarried heterosexual adult\u00a0of sound mind and body was totally foreign. \u00a0Hugh Hefner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":62772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,2102,2087,2100,253,23703,1047,212,293,23705,76],"class_list":["post-1889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-gender-history","tag-gender-masculinity","tag-gender-work","tag-history","tag-marketing","tag-pornography","tag-alcohol","tag-social-construction","tag-vintage-stuff","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/06\/11.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1889"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70325,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889\/revisions\/70325"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}