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Why Hugh Hefner's legacy should not be celebrated

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Pathikrit Sanyal
Pathikrit SanyalSep 29, 2017 | 11:20

Why Hugh Hefner's legacy should not be celebrated

“[Hugh Hefner] launched his magazine by buying nude photos of Marilyn Monroe, not paying her a dime, and exploiting her beauty and fame. Spare me the cant,” tweeted Sarah Churchwell, an American literature professor, referring to Washington Post’s obituary of Hugh Marston Hefner, the founder and editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine.

Hefner died on September 28 at the ripe age of 91. In his lifetime, Hefner accomplished much – starting from wealth, to fame, to notoriety to a cult status. Hefner’s lavish lifestyle, his silk-robed persona and his famous mansion has almost become synonymous with male affluence and success. Hefner has defined the aspirations of men for decades now, with his lavish lifestyle and constant company of bodacious women. 

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But is that the only legacy Hef (as he was popularly known) leaves behind? Clearly not. Hefner was much more than the man who gave the world breasts to ogle at in a magazine and more than an old man playing tennis with attractive young women. And on his death, people have remembered and reminded all of the many things he was – and all of those things are not admirable.

Sexual revolutionary to sexual predator

The puritanical values of America in the 50s gave way to the erotic, sexually liberated and open-minded 60s. It was nothing short of a revolution, whose effects are often referred to as western values in India even today. The traditional ways of heterosexual monogamy, orthodox values and viewing sex as something shameful were shaken in this revolution and Hugh Hefner had a big role to play in it.

Hefner’s Playboy magazine and Playboy clubs allowed the American male to explore a kind of sexual awakening. But of course, it came at a cost and that cost was the women. Columnist Sonia Saraiya writes in Variety, “Hefner’s version of liberating himself from the prudish mores of his youth directly led to collecting young blonde women around him as if they were posable Barbies”. 

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“Hefner’s Playboy was revolutionary because of how much it permitted men to fantasise about; but what Hefner and Playboy were unwilling or unequipped to address was the fallout — that those fantasies often came at the cost of women’s bodies,” she adds.

This accusation of the objectification of women was supported quite clearly by Hefner himself in 2010, when he famously said, “The notion that Playboy turns women into sex objects is ridiculous. Women are sex objects… It’s the attraction between the sexes that makes the world go ‘round. That’s why women wear lipstick and short skirts.” 

It is not unfair at all to see Hefner’s magazine and the culture around it as the basis of today’s misogynistic ecosystem. Turning women into a commodity for men was clearly not first attempted by Hefner, but seeing that it is an important part of his legacy, it is completely right to criticise him for it. To paraphrase a tweet, apparently having sex with a lot of women, forming a harem and taking pictures of them naked makes you one of the greatest men to ever live.

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But it isn’t this transparently sexist worldview alone that makes Hefner problematic. It is his behaviour that does.

Hefner has, time and again, been called a sexual predator, and for good reason. For one to be able to see Hefner as a predator, one has to shun all the preconceived notions one has of that term. Hefner was not a sex-deprived, depraved man with Marquis de Sade like fetishes (or maybe he had some). He was a refined man with refined tastes who gave off an impression of respecting women. But just because he asked a random internet person to respect women and not call them “bitches”, does not mean that he respected women’s consent and agency.

Model and actress Izabella St James, who was also once in a relationship with Hefner, recalls in her autobiography Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion, about the horrors of the Playboy Mansion, which was less of the funhouse it was portrayed as and more of a prison.

“Little did I realise that by moving into the mansion I was losing all the freedom I associated with the Playboy lifestyle,” said St James. “Strictest of all was the curfew. Everyone had to be on the Mansion grounds by 9pm every night — unless we were out with Hef at a club or a function. People honestly did not believe us when we told them we had a curfew at the wild and crazy Playboy Mansion.”

A lot of other ex-Playmates have said that the Mansion was a façade that hid a grubby world where the women were made to feel they are no ­better than prostitutes, paid pocket money by an “octogenarian obsessive” who funds plastic ­surgery to turn them into his physical ideal, and yet must still take huge amounts of Viagra to manage sex with them. 

Sadly, that’s not all. According to ex-Playmates, having sex with Hefner was, “part of the unspoken rules, It was almost as if we had to do it in return for all the things we had".

Julie Bindel, in her column in Independent, takes down the man’s legacy with one simple comparison: “To claim that Hefner was a sexual liberationist or free speech idol is like suggesting that Roman Polanski has contributed to child protection.” 

Roe to Monroe

In a 2010 interview to Vanity Fair, Hefner said, "Playboy fought for what became women's issues, including birth control. We were the amicus curiae, friend of the court, in Roe v Wade, which gave women the right to choose [abortion]. But the notion that women would not embrace their own sexuality is insane."

Funny that a man who spoke about a woman’s right to choose would not allow the same right to the very first woman to be featured in his famous magazine. Marilyn Monroe, the celebrated actor and model, was the centrefold of the first issue of Playboy in December 1953. Hefner had credited the inclusion of the naked picture of Monroe for making the magazine such a success, with the issue completely selling out. In fact, Hefner’s final resting spot is reportedly right next to Monroe.

Author Sady Doyle, in her book Trainwreck, writes of a horrific tale:

“…Hugh Hefner, the man who leaked Monroe’s nudes in the first issue of Playboy decades before the phrase ‘leaking nudes’ was even in the lexicon – he became an instant celebrity; she had to apologise for the photos, and feared her career – bought the crypt next to Monroe’s for $75,000. It was a gruesome joke, ‘sleeping with’ the woman he’d almost ruined. And doing so without her consent – claiming her in death, as he’d claimed the right to exploit her life.”

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Hefner’s legacy as a sexual liberator and revolutionary, when examined under a microscope, and not even a powerful one, makes for a repulsive sight. No one is a saint, and Hefner certainly prided himself a sinner; but celebrating Hefner with reverence and respect is a little too much to ask for. His work and his movement cannot be denied, hut neither can his faults and the toxicity he has managed to perpetuate. Perhaps the best way to sum things up, is this tweet:

Also read: How Mastram saved me and my generation

Last updated: September 29, 2017 | 11:20
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