Hugh Hefner turned 80 on Sunday. That's right--the world's most famous playboy entered his ninth decade, still wearing his pajamas and still preaching his gospel of free sex, paid pornography, and liberation from sexual morality.
The story of Hugh Hefner is the story of America in the midst of a great social and moral transformation--the Sexual Revolution. In the span of a few short decades, America (and much of the Western world) rewrote the entire system of sexual ethics. What had once been condemned was now celebrated, and what was once unmentionable became material for mainstream conversation, entertainment, and debate. Few revolutions have been so comprehensive in scope and reach--from the personal to the political. And Hugh Hefner has been one of the major revolutionaries of our times.
Hefner's Methodist mother wanted him to be a missionary. In a very real sense, she got her wish in reverse. Hefner became a missionary all right, but a missionary that preached a rejection of the Christian sexual ethic. Hefner has been one of the most effective instruments of social change of the past century. At an early age, he set for himself a major goal--to be an agent of sexual revolution. Along the way, he also intended to make a great deal of money. He was to accomplish both goals in a big way.
It all began with Hefner's idea for a magazine that would mainstream pornography. He obtained revealing photographs of Marilyn Monroe and intended to launch his new magazine to the American male, calling it Stag Party. Legal complications required a name change, and a friend suggested Playboy. Few brands have become so dominant in America's cultural imagination--or done so much damage to the fabric of our society.
Pornography was not invented by Hugh Hefner, of course. His commercial achievement was finding a way to mainstream porn in the culture by selling it as a liberated lifestyle, complete with other features of the "good life," including everything from fast cars to expensive clothes--all intended to sell a new image to the American male, who would rationalize pictures of naked women as "art" and culture.
For Hefner, selling himself was central to selling his magazine--and his empire of pornography. He created a persona by cultivating his image as a silk pajama-wearing playboy who lived the ultimate good life, housed in the Playboy mansion and accompanied by the constant company of beautiful young women. With Hefner, the personal was the commercial. He was, in effect, his first real invention. His image of the good life in the fast lane was picked up by the larger culture. For several years, his Playboy Mansion became the stage for a television show that drew major Hollywood celebrities as guests. His strategy was to remove the shame from pornography by linking the pornographic lifestyle to cultural respect, big money, and political power.
Nevertheless, the money was never far from mind. Playboy Enterprises became the first explicitly pornographic business to go public, with shares traded in the stock markets. As Matthew Scully commented in The Wall Street Journal, "It was Mr. Hefner who put the real money in porn, a business hard to go poor in under any circumstances (except for the unfortunates given starring roles) and today a $57 billion-a-year global industry. He brought it into the central stream of culture, so that now even upscale bookstores stock Penthouse or similar offerings without a second thought. He gave porn that 'classy' feel and its phony creed of 'artistic' expression and protected 'speech' by which far livelier fare than Playboy would soon ease into the popular culture."
Playboy may have mainstreamed pornography, selling itself as "soft" porn, but Hefner and his company quickly ventured into the "hard core" sectors of the squalid business of pornography. As Scully remarked, "Playboy Enterprises itself, years ago, dropped the pretense of refinement and delicacy, following the money into hard-core cable. Soft-core, hard-core, these were all along just degrees of exploitation and self-debasement and for the procurers a purely legal and commercial calculation."
