Le pimp célèbre
Hefner threatened to sue Suzanne Moore once.
Journalists live in dread of such calls. I had called Hefner a pimp. To me this was not even controversial; it was self-evident. And he was just one of the many “libertines” who had threatened me with court action over the years.
It is strange that these outlaws have recourse in this way, but they do. But at the time, part of me wanted my allegation to be tested in a court of law. What a case it could have made. What a hoot it would have been to argue whether a man who procured, solicited and made profits from women selling sex could be called a pimp. Of course, central to Playboy’s ideology is the idea that women do this kind of thing willingly; that at 23 they want nothing more than to jump octogenarians.
Now that he’s dead, the disgusting old sleaze in the smoking jacket is being spoken of as some kind of liberator of women. Kim Kardashian is honoured to have been involved. Righty ho.
Ah well if Kim Kardashian is cool with it what more is there to say? She has gotten rich by selling herself like so much Wagyu beef, so she’s exactly the right person to decide.
The accounts of the “privileged few” who made it into the inner sanctum of the 29-room Playboy mansion as wives/girlfriends/bunny rabbits are quite something. In Hefner’s petting zoo/harem/brothel, these interchangeable blondes were put on a curfew. They were not allowed to have friends to visit. And certainly not boyfriends. They were given an “allowance”. The big metal gates on the mansion that everyone claimed were to keep people out of this “nirvana” were described by one-time Hefner “girlfriend no 1” Holly Madison in her autobiography thus: “I grew to feel it was meant to lock me in.”
They were given an allowance? Something tells me it wasn’t exactly a fair wage.
The fantasy that Hefner sold was not a fantasy of freedom for women, but for men.
It was never, ever, ever about the women. The women were just the stiffeners for the liberated men. The men were the subjects; the women were the means, the implements, the dolls, the apertures, the lagomorphs.
But this man is still being celebrated by people who should know better. You can dress it up with talk of glamour and bunny ears and fishnets, you can talk about his contribution to gonzo journalism, you can contextualise his drive to free up sex as part of the sexual revolution. But strip it all back and he was a man who bought and sold women to other men. Isn’t that the definition of a pimp? I couldn’t possibly say.
The headlines should all have read Famous Pimp Dies.
I’m struck by the contrast between the ethos he professed at the start of his publishing career, and what he actually lived, especially in his final decades.
From the editorial in the first issue of Playboy:
Which, depending on how you interpret it, sounds like something I could get behind. Being a gracious host. Enjoying the good things in life, but not treating the “female acquaintance” as one of those “things” — instead, she’s an equal conversational partner.
But Hef’s practice was a lot different than his theory. Far from being a bon vivant enjoying the good things in life, he rarely left his home, and even when he did, he’d still wear pajamas if he could. And as to the women: like Wooderson from Dazed & Confused, Hef’s real motto was “I get older, but they stay the same age.” And these pieces of “arm candy” certainly weren’t there to discuss Picasso and Nietzsche, just to reassure the old relic that he was still “sexy.” Though it baffles me how anyone can find self-confidence from the feigned affections of someone who’s there to receive her allowance, and who has to be kept under lock and key lest she succumb to the temptations of a non-octogenarian.
In the end, Hef seemed to become what he had claimed to hate. Like the stereotypical 1950s husband, he expected his women to be submissive and dutiful in exchange for the material wealth he provided.
There’s not much to disagree with but I think this conflation of pimp with pornographer is a false move and undermines the attacks on Hefner and his like partly because the average person realises that the things are not the same – even if they are both abominable – and is immediately suspicious of the motives of the person pretending they are. If they have a strong case, why do they need to mislead? It is similar to the attempts to conflate speech and violence, if the two things are the same then if we suppress one we must suppress the other which usually means the real offence gets off the hook, although all the alternatives are just as bad.
Pinkeen, I’m not exactly sure how a pimp and a pornographer are particularly different; they both sell women’s bodies for the use of men. The problem, in my mind, is that people assume that they are different, since in the case of the pornographer, the men aren’t actually having sex with the women. That is not that big a distinction. The key thing is: (1) sell women’s bodies; and (2) for the use of men. (Just to keep from all the derailers who might want to jump in here, I would say that these definitions fit those who sell men’s bodies for the use of women, as well. It’s just that this has not translated into a generalized disrespecting of men as a group, and men being sexualized is not used to deny them access to the corridors of power).