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from the godfather-of-the-sexual-revolution dept.
Hugh Hefner, Playboy Magazine Founder and Star of Girls Next Door, Dies at 91
"Hugh M. Hefner, the American icon who in 1953 introduced the world to Playboy magazine and built the company into one of the most recognizable American global brands in history, peacefully passed away today [September 27] from natural causes at his home, The Playboy Mansion, surrounded by loved ones," a rep for the Playboy Enterprises founder said in a statement to PEOPLE.
[...] "My father lived an exceptional and impactful life as a media and cultural pioneer and a leading voice behind some of the most significant social and cultural movements of our time in advocating free speech, civil rights and sexual freedom. He defined a lifestyle and ethos that lie at the heart of the Playboy brand, one of the most recognizable and enduring in history. He will be greatly missed by many, including his wife Crystal, my sister Christie and my brothers David and Marston, and all of us at Playboy Enterprises," said Cooper Hefner, his son and Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises.
By putting up his furniture as collateral for a loan and borrowing the rest from family and friends, Mr. Hefner published the very first issue of Playboy in December of 1953, which featured a nude Marilyn Monroe.
The same year, Hefner launched media and lifestyle company Playboy Enterprises, Inc., on which he served as a board member until the time of his death.
[...] The magazine became known for its articles as well as the beautiful women that graced its pages, with Hefner asking some of the world's greatest and most progress literary figures to write for him including, Hunter S. Thompson, John Updike, Ian Fleming, Joseph Heller, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Margaret Atwood, Jack Kerouac and Kurt Vonnegut.
Also at The New York Times, NPR, BBC (obituary), The Guardian, and Reuters.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Thursday September 28 2017, @12:16PM (5 children)
Thank you for the millions of fathers whose poorly stashed Playboys magazines (which were purchased for the incredibly informative articles) have given countless children like me the opportunity to look at nekkid ladies flinging open the door of human sexuality. And then your mom finds the pages you ripped out poorly hidden under your rug. Success! The cycle of men learning to poorly hide their Playboy's continues.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 28 2017, @12:22PM
Only if you count 10 year olds poorly hiding their Internet history filled with Redtube and hardcore pornography.
(Score: 4, Funny) by theluggage on Thursday September 28 2017, @12:43PM (1 child)
Huh. Nerds these days. Look under my bed when I was a teenager and all you'd find was a stack of old New Scientist and Scientific American which fell open at the Radio Shack TRS-80 adverts...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday September 28 2017, @09:20PM
Those ads were interesting in the old days (early 80s)
I got in quite a bit of trouble with my mom over a back cover ad on 80 micro or rainbow or hot coco or something where the ad strategy was a nice 80s big haired very curvy woman in a very tight lacy revealing nightgown with the implication that whatever she was selling would let you get to bed (presumably with her) earlier because your computer would be faster or ... something. I keep thinking it was either FHL Flex (an alternative OS) or it was an exatron stringy floppy (kinda an 8-track endless loop cassette for those who couldn't afford a $500 to $1000 floppy disk upgrade) or something similar. I seem to recall she gave the magazine to my dad who thought it was a little ridiculous but not quite playboy. I failed in a google attempt to find this.
Although I failed to find that epic advertisement, but for a comparative example, on archive.org, 80 micro magazine 1982 October, we got "Med systems" selling what amounts to a DnD helper program (roll dice, keep track of character sheets) advertised by a busty long haired redhead in a backless dress, oddly enough I never saw anyone quite like that at any of my DnD adventures, but maybe if I had bought that software she would magically appear and DM for us, I donno. Then Ultimate Software is selling some business software and a programming editor by using a blonde sitting by the pool in a one piece suit with cleavage down to her bellybutton, she appears to be sun tanning while using "Inventory Control III" on a trs-80 model 1. Compuserve (which comes up as a mis-spelling on Chrome which is a tragedy in itself) is selling "Megawars" which is kinda a proto TW2000 MMORPG and their graphics are a water color of a nearly naked body builder wearing only a space suit helmet (hmm I detect a biophysics problem here, vacuum don't work that way...) trying to behead a vampiric looking fellow with a lightsaber while a very well endowed long haired brunette woman wearing a one piece bathing suit and cowboy boots is waving and shooting two laser pistols in the air, you know, as you do. Finally in a non-woman-as-sex-object comment, this was 1982 before HIV so Meta Technologies thought it would be a great idea to take out a full page ad for their new business database software named AIDS because after all, every businessman needs AIDS, because AIDS is so boss and awesome and cool. Just a few years later that advertisement would be a huge dose of WTF, but at the time it was just another ad for business software. "Good news boss, I got AIDS".
You have to realize this was a long time ago; contemporary standards were such that outright naked women were in car repair ads, so your average home computer magazine having ads with women in swimsuits and cocktail dresses is, for that era, relatively progressive and tame.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday September 29 2017, @01:52AM (1 child)
Meh. I found their nudes and centerfolds to be totally lame, for nudes I preferred Penthouse and Hustler.
Though I can give Playboy credit for one thing: The articles were what got me into reading as a kid, and that boring adult reading was actually good. I would go rummaging through my parents' closet looking for bate bait, find a Playboy, start reading an article and lose track of time. I'd finally realize what time it was (parents about to come home), put the Playboy back and get out, without picking up a single other magazine.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Sunday October 01 2017, @02:09AM
Depends on which friends house you were at. The sleazier the friends parents, the better. Some kids just ripped them off from the "Gandhi corner store". The holy grail were those ones that came three in a black plastic package with a clear window to just the magazine name and maybe half of a woman's face. Forget what the fuck they were called because shortly after a friend discovered the vast holy grail of bbs porn, mostly gif's and the odd bmp, tga, tif, pcx, etc. Ah. Memories. Many a hidden floppy disk under drawers and so forth.