“I got a call from Ira Ritter, Playgirl’s then-publisher, wanting me to do interviews for. Lawrence Grobel, Features contributor, 1977–87 From 2004 to 2006 he was the president of AIGA Los Angeles. It’s hanging on the wall in front of me now.” I quote-unquote ‘forgot’ to send back to. The images show Mick in a black leather jacket. The coverline was, ‘Rock’s Bad Boy Approaches a Mid-Life Crisis’, and the art photographed by David Bailey, with whom I shared an agent at the time. He was considered the go-to sex-symbol at the time. “My most memorable cover was Mick Jagger, for the February 1983 issue. And by choosing good-looking models, too.
by getting good photographers to work for us – Philip Dixon and Matthew Rolston, who worked a lot for Interview. It was my job to visually reflect the magazine’s mission statement – which was to offer a liberal, open-minded vision of female sexuality. “I was the art director, so I designed all the spreads. I thought it was the female equivalent of Playboy, but it was a long way from that. I’d always wanted to live in LA, so I called my friend who got me a job at a magazine out there: Playgirl. I started in London when I was 22, at Harper’s & Queen magazine. “I’m 67 and basically retired now, but I’ve had a good career. Kuhns is the publisher of Playgirl magazine. When I look at today, it’s just beautiful imagery.” To me, the centrefolds were always about the art – art with guys who happened to be naked. Even so, the innocence of the nudity – the straightforwardness and simplicity of it – is really what drew me in. “I don’t have any hard facts about this, but I think that reading the magazine was done very much in private. To experience in any manner that is pleasing to the individual ‘you’.’ A ‘Playgirl’ deserves to look at today’s most exciting males – those you desire, and whom you wish to reach out and touch. but at the same time enjoys sex and a good lifestyle. The first issue, from June of 1973, as, ‘A woman who loves takes care of herself. When I started collecting old issues, I saw that ‘Entertainment for Women’ meant much more than pictures of naked men.
I love the fact that it was provocative, but also included beautiful fashion spreads as well. In hindsight I didn’t know anything about, but I was drawn to it visually – especially to the early issues. “I acquired the publication on December 16, 2016, just after the election. Jack Lindley Kuhns, Playgirl publisher, 2016–present Here, we set out to do so, interviewing a range of past and present authorities – from an intern-turned-decorated-author to the publisher charged with resuscitating the brand. But one way to imagine what Playgirl can be is to remember what it was. We won’t know until the magazine launches this autumn. Would they traffic in girl-boss empowerment? Or capitalise on post-sex-revolution innovations like OnlyFans? “Playgirl” trademark aside, would they flout gender and sexual binaries altogether? But now that I work in media myself, I was also curious about where and how the magazine would position itself. When I learned that Playgirl was poised to return in 2020 – this time as a print-centric glossy – I was, you might say, titillated. The episode, besides evincing my latent yet irrepressible homosexuality, also locates Playgirl’s slippery place in pop culture: acceptable titillation one minute, contraband the next. Playgirl! Before I knew it, a breathless commotion had erupted: mum, the stylist, the entire salon lunging to intercept my wandering, impressionable hands. Once, while idling at my mum’s hair appointment, I (a kid) casually reached for some reading material – a smooth men’s torso resting atop the magazine stack. However audacious, the Playgirl brand paled in size to that of Playboy, possibly muddied by concurrent gay-liberation forces: by not explicitly courting a male audience, the magazine seemed to reinforce a kind of glass closet.Īn early memory of mine illustrates the magazine’s contradictory allure. In lifting the veil on the disproportionately verboten “male nude” – packaging it in well-lit, passably artful centerfolds – the magazine challenged norms that the sexual revolution did not – namely ancient gender gaps vis-à-vis modesty, desire, and power. Sparked by a convergence of the sexual and women’s revolutions, Playgirl was in some ways ahead of its time. Primarily targeted at straight, male eyes, this semi-mainstream pulp found a notable exception in Playgirl – the magazine of adult entertainment for women, launched in 1973.
National outlets like Playboy and Hustler disseminated varying degrees of erotica with record abandon. As old as cave paintings, “the nude” unsurprisingly exploded after the sexual revolution – reflecting our innate thirst in new and exciting ways.