The Rise and Fall of the Playboy Bunny
How Playboy and its ‘Playmates’ influenced the sexual revolution
Written by Kylie Hynes, Contributing Writer
Since its inception, Playboy has been about disrupting norms surrounding sexuality, evoking desire in its male readership and putting entertainment's most famous vixens on display. Created by the ultimate bon vivant Hugh Hefner, Playboy magazine is synonymous with its own indulgent and luxurious lifestyle and one of the most iconic brands in the world: the Playboy Bunny.
The Playboy brand didn’t become a global sensation overnight. Before Hugh Hefner could be found sauntering around his mansion in crimson silk pajamas, throwing raucous parties or on red carpets with another blonde woman on his arm, he was a lowly Chicago copywriter. Jobless, Hefner decided to start his own men’s magazine.
With $8,000 he scraped together from investors, the first Playboy issue was published from Hefner’s home in December 1953 with a stock photo he purchased of Marilyn Monroe as the cover. Uncertain if there would be a second issue, Hefner was shocked when his first one sold over 50,000 copies (McLaughlin, 2022).
With new-found money in his pocket and a vision far ahead of its time, Hefner steadily expanded the Playboy brand throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s. Wanting to bring discussions of sex and nude pictorials out of the proverbial gutter and onto the coffee tables of middle-class Americans, Hefner did what no magazine had ever dared to do (Pitzulo, 2017). He normalized a lifestyle no one had ever before seen glorified in the light of day—one shamelessly filled with luxury, sophistication, music, fashion, politics and of course, sex.
While sex was always at the root of Playboy, the magazine was far more than a pamphlet filled with nude women and discussions about sex. In fact, for decades, Playboy was the vanguard of fiction, music, fashion and human rights. All about informing and influencing the modern man, Hefner used the magazine to sneak a wide array of interests into its content, including sexuality, jazz music, highbrow fiction, fashion, decorating tips, cooking and progressive politics. In his view, the modern man had neither the time nor patience for archaic opinions on sexuality, gender roles or race relations (McLaughlin, 2022).
In terms of women, Hefner created the magazine to feature what he referred to as “the girl next door.” By sexualizing this “girl next door” persona the models presented in Playboy, Hefner challenged the post-war cultural insistence that “good” girls confine their sexuality to married monogamy and live to domesticity (Pitzulo, 2017).
The women featured in Playboy were referred to as “Playmates.” While 12 women became Playmates every year (one for each monthly issue), at the end of each year, only one was given the coveted “Playmate of the Year” title.
The term “Playboy Bunny” came to fruition after Hefner opened his first “Playboy club” in Chicago. Having become the most prominent men’s magazine in the world—selling seven million copies a month at the height of its success—Hefner began building an empire of “private key” clubs served by cocktail waitresses dressed in bunny outfits in the 1960s (The New York Times). Wearing bunny ears, a satin one-piece, black tights, a tail, bow tie and cufflinks, cocktail waitresses working at Hefner’s clubs were referred to as “Playboy Bunnies.”
As the terms “Playboy Bunny” and “Playmate” became interchangeable, the phrases not only referred to the women who appeared on Playboy’s covers but also to the women Hefner associated closely with. Whether they were being used as arm candy to accompany Hefner on red carpets or boarding his plane, which he named “The Big Bunny,” these women became paramount to the Playboy brand.
Shorter, curvier and consisting mostly of brunettes, bunnies in the ‘50s and ‘60s had a notably different figure than women of later decades. While the 1970s saw the prevalence of slightly taller and more slender figures amongst Playboy bunnies, a more drastic shift in body type occurred in the ‘80s. It was out with the hourglass figure and in with the tall and toned. By the ‘90s, bunnies were known for their supermodel physiques and being surgically enhanced. Spending up to $70,000 a year on breast implants for the bunnies, Hefner fueled the plastic surgery trend that swept through the 1990s and early 2000s (Willet-Wei, 2016). During this time, the blonde, tan, busty image that’s most synonymous with Playboy began.
The 1990s and 2000s saw Playboy reach new heights, and the bunnies were at the forefront. Although the bunny costumes themselves were no longer as popular as they once were, public fascination with the bunnies’ image and lifestyle became so great that the women were offered a reality show, “Girls Next Door,” in 2005. The show ran for five years and followed the lives of Hefner’s three main girlfriends: Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson (Willet-Wei, 2016).
However, the bunnies weren’t the only women behind Playboy’s success. Countless celebrities were featured in Playboy’s infamously nude centerfolds, such as Madonna, Drew Barrymore, Cindy Crawford and Pamela Anderson. Doing so had become a career milestone, and it was seen as a huge boost for those looking to increase their star power (The New York Times, 2017).
Since Hefner's passing in 2017, the cultural implications of Playboy have proven to be somewhat controversial. While many celebrate Hefner and his publication for being a leading force in the fight for sexual liberation, civil rights and free speech, many opponents argue that they did little more than reduce women to sexual objects (Pitzulo, 2017).
As the feminist movement was taking off in the 1960s, Playboy’s objectification of women became increasingly under fire by feminists. They believed Playboy bunnies were nothing but sex symbols during a period of sexual repression, but Hefner had far more honorable intentions for both his brand and his bunnies than most realize. Instead of following the example of the other sex magazines by featuring nude photos of only nameless, vacant-eyed and objectified women, Hefner consciously attempted to humanize the women by portraying the models as real human beings in recognizable settings (Pitzulo, 2017). By sexualizing the “girl next door” on Playboy covers, Hefner got the public’s attention so he could share far more revolutionary ideas than just sex.
Although Hefner wanted to bring conversations about sex out into the open, he did not solely promote the kind of hedonistic sex he famously participated in. The man who lived in a mansion with women half his age supported loving, committed relationships. In fact, in Playboy’s prominent letters to the editor columns, Hefner and his staff held a constant dialogue with their millions of readers about social, sexual and political issues (Pitzulo, 2017).
At the forefront of what would become a revolution of sexual liberation, Playboy’s debaucherous brand and lifestyle seemed to contradict much of its written content. Readers were told that mutual respect and dignity were crucial to mature, loving relationships. Both men and women were steered away from infidelity. Men were told that they needed to take responsibility for unplanned pregnancies, and women were told that their sexual needs were as important as their partners (Pitzulo, 2017).
While Playboy succeeded in revolutionizing traditional ideas about sexuality and opening the minds of millions to new desires and possibilities, the women of Playboy were still intensely and undoubtedly sexualized at the hands of Hefner’s brand, whether he intended for them to be or not. Rather than breaking women out of their previous sexually restrictive roles, Hugh Hefner seemed to merely give them another restrictive role to choose from (Jones, 2017).
Sources:
Jones, T. (2017, December 23). The impact of Playboy on society. Medium.
McLaughlin, D. (2022, March 10). A comprehensive history of the rise and fall of Playboy magazine. Cool Material.
Pitzulo, C. (2022, September 27). I've spent years looking at what was actually in Playboy, and it wasn't just objectification of women. The Conversation.
The New York Times. (2017, September 28). Playboy in popular culture. The New York Times.
Willett-Wei, M. (2015, October 16). The evolution of the Playboy Woman's body type from the 1950s to now. Business Insider.