Just What Is Message Behind Magazines?
I had to laugh at Jack Smith’s piece on Playboy and the women’s magazines (“And You Think Playboy Is Sexy?” June 27). The last time I was solemnly assured men pick up Playboy to read the articles, I was 16 years old and the callow youth speaking to me was barely shaving. I didn’t buy it then; no sale now, either.
I am all for freedom to uh, read, Playboy. Heck, if this guy in the firehouse wants to look at Little Lulu comics, I don’t care, as long as he puts out the fire when my house is burning down. Personally, I would be somewhat embarrassed to go before the world in a court of law and proclaim that this was the intellectual level I found most comfortable, but, hey, the battle for D.H. Lawrence ended a few decades ago and we can’t all be big thinkers.
As for the women’s magazines Smith mentions, the articles on sex appearing in them suggest that all is not well in America’s bedrooms, and that maybe some improvement is in order. Is it possible that these macho, Playboy-perusing hunks aren’t performing as well as one might desire? Call me crazy, but working to improve your relationship with another human being seems to make more sense than communing with a photograph.
Face it, what men who buy Playboy really want is something they’re probably not getting--a grinning twentysomething naked bimbo with supernatural hooters who never talks back and never says, “I don’t want to” or “When was your last shower?”
KIMBERLY FARR, Reseda
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Women’s magazines differ from Playboy in their purpose and their sexual power. The point at which they differ is the photography.
Women’s magazines such as those mentioned in Jack Smith’s column--Ladies Home Journal and Redbook--do not print photos of naked men in provocative poses.
Playboy portrays women as desirable objects of lust for men to gawk at and admire. This is what creates a hostile environment for women to work in. This is what the women firefighters struggling to fit in at the “boys club” fire stations should not have to live with.
CHARLENE R. WYNNE, Long Beach
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My company in a small town in Connecticut was right next to a fire station. I was appalled one evening when I looked out our front window and witnessed the sale of several magazines to some firefighters loitering in front of the station. The magazines were wrapped in brown paper and something tells me they probably weren’t issues of Field & Stream.
It’s very generous of Jack Smith to donate his back issues of Playboy to the firefighters. How about donating some literature while he’s at it--perhaps a complete set of Dickens? Or maybe something a little racier, like Vonnegut. Surely these men can stretch their minds beyond those informative “articles” in Playboy.
BRIDGET S. OGDEN, Hollywood
