Playboy...ruining America

Hugh Hefner, the beginning for corruption in America. For Composition we had to read an essay entitled "The Cultural Victory of Hugh Hefner." I really am not sure why we had to read it for a composition class but I'm sure the point will come out before long. Now we are to respond with our thoughts towards the essay. I am not really sure how to take this essay. At one point it seems as though the idea behind Playboy is fine and then in the next paragraph it seems to be demeaning it. From the beginning, I don't understand why Hugh Hefner started this magazine. At first, Hefner did not want to claim that the work was his. He wanted the approval of the American public before he would acknowledge that he was the mastermind behind the corruption. " If the magazine failed, he felt it would be easier to find another job in the industry..." (quote form playboy.com). Because of Playboy, an entire new belief of acceptable was created in the world of morality.

Once it was believed that the showing of nude images was unacceptable and only done by 'perverts.' Because Hefner put the idea of this out into the open, less people see a problem with it. Men are often now regarded as normal for fantasizing or using sexual language. From sexual jokes to sexual images, many consider it okay when these type of things are posted everywhere, often times on the internet. Before Hefner's magazine, a great percentage of the population would have considered these things absurd and completely against morality of the human being.

Hefner created these distortions of morality not for women, but only for men. He was often considered anti-female liberation, also known as...sexist. He put on the front that he was for the liberation of females, but his first magazine issue greatly counteracts this front. "We want to make it clear from the very start, we aren't a "family magazine." If you're somebody's sister, wife or mother-in-law and picked us up by mistake, please pass us along to the man in your life and get back to your "Ladies Home Companion," (quoted from the essay).
With all this in mind, his magazine makes even less sense. He created the idea that woman are intended only for fulfilling the pleasure of men. They themselves were to enjoy nothing, but providing for the men. He portrays women as statues in his magazine, bodies meant for sexual pleasure, while containing no inner feelings.

The closing of this essay is actually something that I agree with. There is obviously something wrong with Hugh Hefner if he had the mindset that it would take to create something of this nature. He started something in society that can never be taken back. His creation is often referred to "Pandora's Box" in essays everywhere. Pornography has one goal for this society, pure corruption. With this being said, Hugh Hefner had one thing in mind when he created the Playboy magazine. He apparently thought that the world needed corruption and he would do whatever it took to terrorize human morality.