Entertainment for Men

Founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner, Playboy is one of the most recognized and widely circulated magazines in the world. The Playboy Bunny, specifically, is as ubiquitous in American culture as Jesus and Apple Pie. The magazine portrayed the everyday woman as beautiful and provocative to rebel against the 1950’s stereotype of women as only useful when cleaning, cooking, and bearing children. By providing men access to images of nude women, Hefner offered men an outlet to “release” their frustrations with the Puritanical American values of the time. The bunny symbol continues to represent the taboo side of mass media. This taboo coupled with the images of women turns on the average male consumer and triggers a “purchase reaction” within them. The magazine goes as far as engraining itself into its consumers’ identity. They now have this “ideal” view of women that is drastically different from their average experience and they become invested into a sticky situation of paying for sex. Overtime a sub-culture of “pornographic acceptance” formed and spread throughout the globe. This sub-culture has, as Dick Hebdige described sub-cultures, “offended the ‘silent majority’” of America and the world.

Today, the Bunny has crashed through many cultural and language boundaries because nude pictures need no translation. Through this Playboy continues to capitalize on the lustful and animalistic desires of everyday people.