Forty years ago or so, someone bought me a gift subscription to Playboy. For reasons as obvious as they are embarrassing, I quite liked the magazine.
Actually, to be fair to my younger self, it wasn't only the pneumatic nudes that appealed to me. Playboy publishes good prose, both fiction and nonfiction, and as someone who fancies himself as something of an amateur cultural anthropologist, I thought Playboy also did an excellent job of not just inspiring but also chronicling the changing sexual mores of mid-century America.
Indeed, it was with that thought in mind that within a year of receiving my gift subscription, I found myself haunting used magazine stores, trying to track down every issue of Playboy since its December 1953 debut.
I succeeded -- and I continued to read and collect Playboy for the next 25 or 30 years. But about a decade ago, for a variety of reasons, I began to lose interest in the magazine.
So I let my subscription lapse and sold my collection.
I didn't look at Playboy again until two weeks ago, after I received an e-mail invitation to "this year's Playmate of the Year celebration at the Playboy Mansion."
Playmate of the Year? I thought. Do they still have Playmates? And what's to celebrate? Although Playboy is still the top-selling men's magazine, circulation is less than half its 1970s peak of 6.5 million; Maxim outsells it more than 2-1 on the newsstand. And with photos of naked women so ubiquitous on the Internet that they show up on my computer, unbidden and unwanted, several times a day, why would anyone care about Playmates?
But this is Playboy's 50th anniversary year, a cultural milestone of sorts, so I decided to go.
What a gas.
More than 500 people gathered under a big white tent for the Playmate announcement, and while most were -- surprise -- men, largely advertisers and others in business with Playboy, there were many women. Most of them seemed to feel that the nature of the event compelled them to wear dresses with deeply plunging necklines, their age and the amplitude (or absence) of the relevant assets notwithstanding. Never have I been surrounded by so much cleavage.
Because the luncheon doubled as a kickoff to the 50th anniversary festivities, 50 Playmates from years past attended -- among them, Dolores Del Monte, Miss March 1954, still spry and attractive (and modestly dressed) at 71.
