The Hidden Pin Up #8 - The Black Bunny

Today I learned that Hugh Hefner the founder of Playboy Magazine and head of the Playboy empire, has died aged 91.

Hefner has always been a controversial figure in women's history; he claimed to empower women by printing the first publication to accept that women had their own sexuality and sexual desires. This was at a time when women were very much boxed in and expected to follow the wife and mother role, staying demure and wholesome. His ethos worked alongside the growing women's movement by broadening women's outlooks and helped to kick-start the change in society's ideas about the choices a woman could make.

However it can't be overlooked that Hefner has been partly blamed for the ever growing sexualisation of women by viewing them only as sexual objects for the entertainment and pleasure of men. By promoting women's worth through their looks and sexual promise it is argued he has marginalised women's importance in society by perpetuating the idea of youth and beauty as their most important commodity.

Either way Hefner has left an undeniable mark on popular culture worldwide. He has always fascinated me and I have flipped from admiration to repulsion to somewhere in between the more I have learned about him. 

Say whatever you like about Hefner and his legacy, he was liberal enough to embrace all races in his magazine, opening up the pages to many black activists and entertainers long before other mainstream platforms followed suit. Martin Luther King, Ella Fitzgerald, Muhammed Ali, Sammy Davis Jr and Malcom X all frequented the publication at a time of civil unrest and racial divide.

In March 1965 Playboy published the first black model as it's centerfold. Jennifer Jackson was chosen as the first black Playmate of the month, a revolutionary move for a mainstream platform that catered for a white American male audience. As I have previously mentioned in other posts, when a black woman was celebrated in this manner for her beauty and not fetished for her race, it was a huge step towards narrowing the racial divide, regardless of the female objectification the era provided.

Interestingly, Jackson has since stated that she never thought that she was pretty, saying, 'there were so many other girls who were so much prettier than me. it's just white mans beauty is different to black mans beauty - I was tall and leggy, white men like that. Black men on the other hand like the girls who were short and had what they called "a brick house body". I didn't get any attention from the brothers. They liked the women who were short and shapely. So there was a different standard of beauty'.

Jackson was the first of a series of black Pin Ups to grace the magazine and work the Playboy clubs. She was followed by Jean Bell in 1969 as the second black Playmate of the month who also became the first black Playmate on the cover (all be it accompanied by four other models).

Then 1971 saw an iconic cover featuring African American model Darine Stern posing on the famous bunny head chair. She was the first black woman to take centre stage on the front of Playboy. With her huge Afro, and not much else she made a powerful statement about black culture moving into the mainstream after the height of the American Civil rights movement. 

This was a time where black culture was embracing its heritage and taking back control of the stereotypes white culture had used against it for centuries. Hence the Afro and a curvaceous figure were identified with power and pride by the black community.

Moving on 40 years or so, it's not that unusual to see a black bunny or Playmate these days, though still quite rare. Last year did see Eugenia Washington from America's next Top Model become Playboy's Playmate of the year but she was only the 3rd black woman to be named since the magazine's launch over 60 years ago!

With Hef now shuffling off this mortal coil, I do wonder what direction Playboy will take. He was always the compass for the magazine, steering it towards topical subjects, advocating freedom of speech and championing civil rights as well as pushing the seedier sexual element and churning out playmate after playmate. It will be interesting to watch how things progress now that his tight hold is gone. In a time of increasing intolerance to race and gender equality (watch the news, read a newspaper, it's there), I can't help thinking that losing Hefner at this point could go either way in terms of progress (as backwards as that sounds when speaking of a man who made his fortune from the flesh of women). 

If Playboy loses it's edge (as hidden by tits and big hair as it might have been), it would be a sad outcome for a magazine that since its birth, has consistently caused controversy by giving the world a broader idea of what the mainstream could look like. Lets hope whoever steps into his velvet slippers and smoking jacket has the vision and, please, the courage to keep pushing the boundaries of conservatism, but give women a real voice too.

The Hidden Pin Up #4 - The Black Pin Up Illustrated

Throughout the early 20th century the traditional Pin Up was big business in the world of commerce and entertainment. In the advertisements found in newspapers and on the covers of magazines the Pin Up was exquisitely drawn and painted by talented artists and then mass reproduced in the effort to sell the 'American Dream' to the public.

The illustrated Pin Up was everywhere yet her image was seldom seen with darker skin.

I really love the traditional Pin Up art work of the 40's through to the 60's, it is so well executed and has always inspired me, but I found it disappointing that I could find hardly any non white models painted by my favourite artists!

A model of indeterminate race by Gil Elvgren, confusingly tagged as a 'black' Pin Up by some sources

As we saw in my last few posts, the black Pin Up was definitely around, she existed in models and dancers, performers and actresses, so why was she not seen selling shiny products and lifestyles to the masses?

In this case I can only presume that when it comes to advertising, companies went with the image that would sell the most products. Even though a select few burlesque shows and girly magazines did cater to an African-American audience, in the larger scheme of things that audience was in the minority, and if everyone still needed to buy universal items like household cleaners and petrol, then the white Pin Up was the girl to put on the ad.

Saying that though, I did locate a few examples of non white Pin Up illustrations, but even these were difficult to find and had little or no information to give them any context.

There's this dark skinned beauty from a 1955 calendar. It's frustrating that I don't know who the artist was or the reason this calendar was made. This image has a back story we might never know. I like it though. The model is vivacious and sexy and her skin colour seems to me to have no influence on how she has been portrayed. This makes me think the calendar was aimed at an African-American audience because, as we have seen in past posts, the white mainstream audience of the era found it difficult to accept a black female as sexual/sensual without racially stereotyping her first and taking away her identity.

On a different note, this earlier lady from the 1940's who is finding it hard to keep her clothes on is ticking all kinds of dark skinned cliches. This makes her obviously 'A' exotic and 'B' slightly primitive. Surrounded by greenery she could be a jungle dweller or an island savage, either way she is provocative and passive. Despite these visual tropes I find this picture beautifully painted and a real treat to look at.

 I was losing all heart at finding any other relevant art work, when, out of the blue, I stumbled across a range of images by the quintessential Pin Up artist of the vintage era, Alberto Vargas. Best known for creating airbrushed images of the all-American girl next door for over 30 decades, Vargas produced a series of Afro Pin Up's for Playboy in the 1970's.

Taking a cue from the trend for Blaxploitation films that were enjoying huge success during the early 70's, you can see how the idea of a black Pin Up must have been both titillating and unusual for a mainstream audience. Similarly, like the Blaxploitation genre, these images can be seen to either empower their black subjects or perpetuate racial stereotypes.

I for one wasn't sure how to approach these images. Taken in context of their time, they show sexual beings who seem to have a claim over their identities, yet those identities are marginalised at best. When I look at them as artefacts from a rich history of black female representation, then they seem to take on a different sort of meaning. They show a development in how the black female was being represented. They acknowledge that white men were taking an active interest in the black Pin Up, not for token value or as a two dimensional cartoon but as actual women. Seen it that sense, they are a pretty big deal.

This notion of black females having allure went some way to narrowing the racial divide, even if it does throw up arguments about mainstream female representation in general. 
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Next time I'll be exploring further into the history of the black Pin Up and ideas of racial fetishisation and objectification, join me then, for more investigation into the hidden Pin Up.

The Hidden Pin Up #3 - Girly Magazines and the Black Cheesecake

A model on the cover of a girly magazine circa 1965 (see more @gemma_parker_artist)

In this third post exploring the history of the black Pin Up I'm going to be looking at the classic Pin Up model. The girl commonly referred to as 'cheesecake'. 

She's flirty and sexy but never overtly so and her brand of sex is only just PG by today's standards, but in her time (the golden years falling between 1930's-1960's) the Pin Up was as sexy as you could get without going 'under the counter'.

Girly magazines were the place to find pin ups and as American culture then, as now, was predominantly white it follows that so was the Pin Up. However, publishers soon caught on that there was a huge untapped market for black bombshells. Yes, black models occasionally appeared in mainstream white publications, but it was rare, and they were often typecast into the well used (and previously discussed) widely acceptable ideas of the 'Savage woman'.

Alongside the issues of 'Flirt' 'Wink' and 'Beauty Parade' came magazines that catered to African-American readers like 'Jive' 'Sepia' and 'Ebony'. Before we even take a look at the pin ups in these publications it's interesting to note the titles. Unlike the publications targeted at the white American male which made sideways references to the girly pictures inside, the black counterparts use entirely black references, not only setting them apart but also claiming those descriptive words for themselves. 'Jet' Magazine may be one exception to this rule because although appearing to make use of the colour black in it's title, it's founder John J Johnson stated that it was called Jet because, "In the world today everything is moving along at a faster clip. There is more news and far less time to read it."

It's also evident that 'Jet' took on some weightier issues regarding race than the typical girly mag. During it's early years the magazine covered the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King and tackled ideas that affected the African-American population of the time. 

The Pin Ups in the magazines had a different portrayal too. Instead of play acting and goofing around with black stereotypes they posed as straight forward pin up models, women who were celebrated for their beauty, not the titillating idea associated with the colour of their skin.

After the revolution of Playboy magazine in 1953 there was a gap for a more up market and intellectual 'mens' magazine aimed at the African-American male. Along came 'Duke Magazine'. First published in 1957 Duke's centrefolds were called 'Duchess of the month' and elevated the model from girl next door to goddess.

Compare this image with the previous photo above of Evelyn Pitcher doing her 'Devil dance' and its clear that this Pin Up's sexual allure is being taken seriously. It is a sad yet interesting fact that the black Pin Up was mostly only seen as a real woman with real sensuality by her black audience

Moving forward to modern times, the Pin Up is here to stay. The vintage Pin Up aesthetic wavered during the 70's through to the 90's, then somewhere around the early 2000's she made a come back. With burlesque nights and vintage fairs now a regular occurrence, where is the black Pin Up now?

She's alive and well in contemporary music videos, and in a twist of post modernism you can find Beyonce morphing into Bettie Page in her video for 'Why Don't You Love Me'. It stands out to me that things seem to have gone full circle in this instance. In my first post in this series I talked about how the mainstream white pin up would sometimes appropriate the garb of another culture, yet the true pin ups from those cultures remained unseen. Here, Beyonce dons the garb of a popular white pin up as if she is just another trend to play with. 

Also unlike previous black performers and models, who took on a racial stereotype which hid their true identity, with Beyonce her donning of a white cultural stereotype only serves to enrich and empower her individuality.

Beyonce is in the lucky position to do all this thanks to her black Pin Up siblings from the past who paved the rocky and uneven path that helped lead to the modern image of a strong powerful black woman. Thanks to their struggles and hard work she can now claim to be 'Queen B' and have the freedom own her sexuality and project it in any way she chooses. 

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Before I end this post, I'd like to mention here some of the fabulous modern black Pin Ups who work in the industry and take inspiration from the past. These are all gorgeous women who claim their black heritage and the Pin Up aesthetic to create beautiful images and performances.

 

Coco Deville

Angelique Noire

Perle Noire

Jeez Loueez

Kristina Paulk

...and there are MANY more!

Join me next time when I take a look and the world of Pin Up illustrations and how the black Pin Up features...or does she?

Ban the Bunny? I don't think so

After reading Tanya Gold's article, 'Why we need to banish the bunnies' in Stylist magazine (June 15th), I was left confused and angry at her blythe remarks about the Playboy bunny girls and feminism in general.

What really stood out for me was that this is a woman claiming to be a feminist and female supporter, defamating other women based purely on their choice of job ( the word 'choice' being the key element.)

Gold comes across as bitter and cynical in the article which was written for the re-opening of the Playboy Club in London's Mayfair: Twenty years since it closed, the club is back, this time with an emphasis on the casino aspect and of course complete with obligatory bunny girls to lend their particular brand of vintage glamour and sex appeal, which according to Gold is a massive step back for the feminist cause.

Feminism is an ever changing concept. It has to be, to make sense of the times we live in. The sentiment remains the same; equality and respect for women, but the ways of putting this into practice can change.


It's outmoded to believe all feminists are big butch man haters, the days of bra burning are long over. Similarly the ideas that women working in a sexualised environment have succombed to the male dominated ideals of society therefore sexy = bad are just as outmoded. As the wave of neo burlesque has proven, woman can feel empowered, and gain a great sense of self esteem by being the object of desire, the sensual persona in the limelight. And this isn't just for the trim, tanned and perfect; Women of every shape and size have graced the stage to become, if only for a few minutes, an expression of sexuality in one form or another, not because they have to, or feel pressured into conforming, but because they choose to and therefore it must bring them some joy. (Some women make a living from this, others do it for pure pleasure, creative, confidence building or otherwise)

                                                        

The message Gold puts across in her article is one of hate and intolerance for woman who choose earn their cash by working in a sexy outfit. She looks down on the be-suited bunnies, frowning at their fluffy behinds and pointy ears with contempt. Why? because unlike her, they don't think sexual objectifiaction is 'purely a private matter'.

Gold seems set on demonising the bunny girl, and to me it seems she simply cannot seperate the woman from the costume. Her preconcieved ideas of objectification seem to have blurred her own abilites to see that the women behind the bunny has a choice. In fact she scoffs at it;

'Is that what our mothers fought for when they went to university and tried to smash the glass ceiling... So this woman could 'choose' to dress as a rabbit and serve me Diet Coke, while angry looking men watch and perv?'

Well, actually, YES! If being a feminist means NOT allowing women the freedom to choose to earn money in any way they see fit then what was the point of all the hard work? It's not reasonable to believe that equality can only be acheived by all women taking professional, sensible, straight roles. If women are to ever gain freedom and equality, then other women like Tanya Gold need to stop marginalising those who don't fit in with her one size fits all ideas.

What's more, the Playboy club is open to women as well as men, and even though some men might enjoy looking at attractive women dressed as bunnies (I still don't know why that's a bad thing, surely those same men can't ALL turn out to be male chauvinist pigs) then some women might also enjoy looking at other women dressed as bunnies. Again, it comes down to choice. Frankly, if Gold hated everything Playboy stands for, why did she even choose to cross the club's threshold?

I don't believe that every woman who works in a sexualised environment or industry is there through choice alone. Of course need, pressure, or force have been involved in some circumstances. But I do believe that in some cases, like those of the bunny girls, choice plays a large role. To mock that choice is just another form of generalising women and taking away their power. Gold could do with learning this before she spouts out another tirade of negativity in the name of feminism. Her views are outdated, and if anything, they set the cause of feminism back by decades.

Playboy Nation

This week I have been so busy with things I forgot to take any pictures of how my first image for my new seires of art work (see past posts from 3 feb 2009) is coming along. So I thought I share with you the latest book I read. It's a good one, it's Mr Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream by Steven Watts.

Hugh Marston Hefner has been a figure of fascination for me for many years now. Not only have I admired him for bringing the bunny girl into this world (one of the most iconic images of femininity from the 20th Century) but Mr Hefner or Hef for short has acheived the almost impossible. He has spent most of his 82 years living his dream! Love him or hate him he is definately a man who deserves further investigation.

Steven Watts book combines the story of Hef's life along with the effect that Playboy has had on American culture. He has proven beyond doubt that much of contemporary thinking towards sex and gender roles have much to do with the early influence of Playboy Magazine and the later Playboy empire.

Hugh Hefner is well known for blaming his uptight Puritan upbringing for his severe backlash of sex and girls. But as Steven Watts explains the truth is much more interesting than the legend. Hef's parents were strict with old Victorian morals and ethics. But his mother in particular encouraged free thinking in her sons (Hef has one brother named Keith). It was this open minded attitude which allowed Hef's dreamer quality to take hold. He loved attending the cinema as a child and saw the love stories in the films as blue prints to what life should be like. At school he created numerous comics and horror stories and during high school started an autobiography of his life chronicalling the many adventures he and his gang of guy and girl friends got up to.

I found it really interesting to note that Hef has never been naturally out going. He was a shy teen who found it necessary to literally re-invent himself to get what he wanted out of life. This is a quality that he fell back one sevaral times over his career. At college he became a crooner known as the 'Campus Ballard King' often singing with a swing band at dances. He had a strong interest in sex from an early age and read every article and book on the subject he could get his hands on. He hated the prim morals of the time that villified sex as a bad thing which only held bad consequences and guilt before marriage.

After college and the army he married his high school sweetheart Millie and went onto have two children, a son and daughter. But he was restless with life. He hated working everyday 9 to 5 jobs and ached for a career doing something he actually cared about. He dabbled with cartooning and eventually fell into working at Esquire Magazine. After some time he decided to start his own magazine. A publication which focused on his free thinking attitiude to sex with articles on sophistication, elegant dressing, living and philosophy. Hef and friends pooled all their resources to create the first edition of Playboy in 1953. One of his cleverest moves was to purchase the rights to the infamous nude photo of Marilyn Monroe, that years most exciting and sexy up and coming star! She became the very first Playboy centrefold.

The magazine took hold immediatley. The liberal views that it aired about marriage, sex and politics were a breath of fresh air for a society ready for a new way of thinking after the oppressive times of WWII and the strict Victorian mindset it had held for so long. It also promoted a new consumer way of life in a way which had never been done before, equating materailism with fulfilment. Playboy went on to become the most successful publication of all time in the 1950's.

Steven Watts book then goes on to explore the effect the magazine and its ethos had on the coming decades: The swinging Sixties were Playboy's golden years.... to begin with anyway. With a new open minded attitude to love, sex, fashion and just about everything else, Playboy was a beacon of modern thinking. But when the feminism movement began near the end of the decade, Hef was made into a figure of female oppression a villain out to objectify women and strip them of humanity. Hef was deeply hurt by the outbust towrds him as he and Playboy had always promoted sex for both sexes, encouraging sex before marriage as a liberating thing for men and women. He had also campaigned for abortion rights for women, another form of liberation in his eyes.

During the Seventies Playboy boomed but suffered from connections to drugs, although Hef never took them himself, the legendary parties at his Chicago Playboy Mansion were well known for cocaine and crazy orgies. This did nothing for his reputation, but Playboy's success grew and grew, with a new empire of casinos and hotels bursting up around the world!

Playboy's worst decade was the Eighties. By this time society had become cynical about sex, once more wary of it as AIDS took hold and the magazine was seen as an outdated publication with nothing to offer an already liberated culture. The murder of Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten only served to lessen the glamour of Playboy and once more gave feminists ammunition to hurl at it's editor, blaming the magazine for the the events that ran up to her death (quite wrongly I have to say).

But by the Nineties the magazine had found its feet once more. The decade of romance and family values with a strong interest in consumerism was a perfect backdrop to the original entertainment magazine for men. Falling back in it's formula of sophisticaion sex and politics the magazine moved into a retro glamour and was seen as THE iconic mens magazine.

Over all these years Hef transformed into a living legend personifying the magazine. With a conveyor belt of girlfiends it would be easy to think he used and consumed all of them like the readers comsumed the the magazine, but Hef was and still is a true romantic. With all his relationships he was known to say, that each one was the love of his life, and I think he truely beleived this too! His many amours over the years each kept a good relationship with him after their split.

Yet Hef can't have been the easiest of men to live with. Obsessed with his new magazine and working long unsocialble hours, Hef eventually left his wife and children in the 50's to pursue the life of a real playboy. He went onto purchase the first Playboy Mansion which soon became the epicentre of wild living and parties, attracting Hollywood elite and entertainers alike. Later in the 70's he moved to Los Angeles to the Playboy Mansion West which he still resides in today. Hef, ever the creature of habit lived life to a schedule of film nights, dinner parties and club nights. No girlfriend could alter this, not even his second wife Kimberley whom he married in the 90's (later to separate from as she felt unable to make her mark on his lifestyle and routine). Throughout his countless relations he also has never stayed true to one female (apart from Kimberley), never making a secret of the fact either.

Now as he heads towards his 83rd year Hef is more a man of intrigue and contradictions than ever. An octogenarian with a bevy of blonde 20 something girlfriends. A true romantic with an inability to stay true to one girl. A visionary who wanted to create a better the world with his liberal ideas but caused a huge morality backlash, and has undoubtedly influenced the feminist movement on both ends of the scale. Hated for degrading women in some peoples eyes but hailed for promoting women's freedom to enjoy sex and advocating ecomonic opportunity and equal rights for women also.
But I think one of the most profound effects his ideas have had according to Steven Watts, has to be his belief in the fantasy of free love, material abundance and instant gratification. He thought these things could only benifit society and encourage happiness, but ultimately we now live in a world where it is difficult to see beyond ourselves and people tend to be less inclined to maintain commitments beyond immediate needs, we tend towards the restless and cynical.

I can't help but like him though. There were definately parts of this excellantly written and facsinating book which made me wince, like Hef's throwaway comments about gender roles during the 50's, but there where more parts that had me nodding along in agreement and even cheering him along! In all I found my values and beliefs backed up by most of what Playboy stands for, and see it only as harmful or corrupting as people want it to be, if anything it was definately an education.