Benton’s heydey was a quarter century ago but she’s still amazingly popular. I still get visitors from a throwaway line about her in the comments section of a November 2003 post. She was almost certainly the premier Playmate of the era, crossing over into mainstream success with many appearances on popular television shows.
You can see why after the jump. (Not safe for work, needless to say).
Those photos certainly seem tame, don’t they? They could just about appear in Maxim or the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition today.
That is Hefner’s point — that Playboy with its mission of sexual liberation is as relevant as ever in these days of federal government crackdowns on television content that some consider indecent. “Attitudes toward nudity and Playboy have changed, in many ways, very little,” says the man who gave the world the Playboy centerfold. “In some ways it is even more political than it was in the ’50s and ’60s.”
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Hef has a lot to make him feel young. He lives with three young, blonde girlfriends in his ornate mansion in Holmby Hills. Their life is being documented in a hit reality TV show on the E! channel, “The Girls Next Door.” His company is opening a new Playboy club in Las Vegas and a new edition of the magazine has debuted in Indonesia, sparking controversy in that largely Muslim nation.
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Although he continues to personify the Playboy philosophy, he is not unaware of the passing years. “You come to a point in life in which you begin to lose some very dear friends, some of whom are peers in terms of age,” he said. “In the last few years, I have lost some very dear contemporaries, including my best buddy in high school, the first girl I went steady with, Mel Torme, one of my closest friends.”
Any regrets? “Certainly it is a life well-lived and I wouldn’t trade places with anybody,” he said. “My life has been so rewarding and so satisfying, I would be hesitant to change anything.”
You’d think that his lifestyle would kill a man of his age. It may well be that it instead keeps him young.
Jerry Norton of Reuters reported Friday on the controversial Indonesia Playboy
Playboy magazine may no longer rate on the sexual cutting edge in some places, but the first edition in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, caused a stir Friday. Although the pictures inside showed less skin than U.S. issues 50 years ago, copies were being passed from desk to desk in Jakarta offices, high demand was reported, and newspapers and broadcasters dwelt at length on the Indonesian issue. A leader of one militant Islamic group threatened to use force, if necessary, to get the magazine withdrawn.
Like the iconic original, the Indonesian Playboy included a serious interview, in-depth articles and color pictures of women, including a fold-out. But no nipples were exposed in the photos, let alone anything approaching full nudity. “I didn’t see any surprising thing in this magazine. It depends on how people interpret it. For me, no problem,” Alex, a white-collar worker who did not want to give his full name, told Reuters Television.
A 40-year-old housewife, Maya, disapproved. “Surely it is against the new anti-pornography law,” she said. Condemnation also came from Chamammah Soeratno, head of the women’s wing of major Muslim moderate group Muhammadiyah. “Everyone knows it’s a pornographic magazine. The first edition may not have any nudity. That’s a very clever move by the publishers,” she told Reuters. Indonesia’s parliament is debating a law to significantly tighten control of media as well as public behavior in an effort to reduce what its proponents see as pornography.
Indonesia has many magazines on news stands that go further than the new Playboy in the sexual content of their articles and at least as far in their pictures. In fact, magazine and newspaper agent Azis, 41, told Reuters Playboy was not different enough from an existing upscale Indonesian men’s magazine, Matra. But even months ago the Playboy image and its Western origin had sparked protests at the mere news of plans for the Indonesian edition, despite promises of a tame version.
Then again, Playboy is still controversial in the United States, where there have been efforts to get the magazine taken off the shelves of military exchanges. Because, while we may send our soldiers off to war, we shouldn’t expose them to bare bosoms.
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