Hugh Hefner

Hugh Hefner has often been represented as a key player in the cultural objectification of women in the United States. Critics of his magazine have "argued that Playboy encourages men to eschew the responsibilities of adulthood by flouting the conventions of emotional commitment to and financial responsibility for women, in favor of a hedonistic focus on sexuality." (Beggan, 2003).

Typically, Hefner has been perceived as being a catalyst to the perpetuation of these sort of moral standards, and that his magazine was an effort to break away from the moral standards instilled by his parents -- consequently, puritan and protestant Christianity. However, assumption makes the all too common error of too strongly associating Hugh Hefner the man with the magazine that made him rich. Importantly, Hefner's original attempts at creating a magazine were utterly ordinary and uncontroversial.

"At first he hoped to produce a wholesome journal about Chicago, but when he failed to find financial backing for that idea, he considered starting a trade magazine for cartoonists, and when that didn't catch on, he returned to the drawing board once more and, remembering the commercial success of PDC, ultimately decided that nude photo magazines weren't so bad after all." (Hylton, 2000).

Essentially, Hefner's drive to produce a magazine with naked pictures in it was not caused by his restrictive upbringing, nor was it a result of a lowly opinion of women; it was simply seen as a way in which he could make money. After all, his wife was pregnant at the time and he needed to find a quick and reliable way to support their child.

So, as Hefner's celebrity began to take-off, and his magazine promoted a free-wheeling lifestyle, he still lived a very ordinary life as a husband and father. "To Hefner, it was of no significance that his magazine did not reflect his own personal lifestyle of interests. What was important to him was that Playboy should depict a lifestyle that readers would want to emulate." (Hylton, 2000). In short, Hefner's morally questionable magazine was a calculated business decision.

If this is so, how is it that Hefner, from the 1960's to the present, has continually maintained an image of male sexual freedom and female objectivity in both his apparent lifestyle and his magazine? Well, the simple answer is that it was another business move. In the aim of selling more magazines it became apparent that the best way of accomplishing this would be to sell himself; he sought to be the image of the ideal man, who would still be a subscriber to Playboy.

Broadly, Hefner wanted to illustrate that a man could be smart, sophisticated, moral, and love sex. "He decided to become his own mascot. No longer would he hide behind his desk, the invisible force behind Playboy. No longer would he settle for being the editor and company president. From 1960 onward, he would set an example of the moral yet sexual man." (Hylton, 2000). Hefner even termed this image "Mr. Playboy," and refined him mentally over the years (Hylton, 2000).

Over the past fifty years Hefner has been regarded as the embodiment of his Mr. Playboy; for all of the positives and negatives associated with that title. Clearly, it was a decisive move and largely driven by visions of success. Yet, it cannot be questioned that his current image in the media,.