01.30.07 6:05 AM CST
• Media
• Jamie Malanowski
Not to seem truculent, but it has often seemed to be Playboy’s fate to be misunderstood by the mainstream media. Thus we were thrilled to see in the January/February issue of The Atlantic an article by Jon Zobenica called "Are We Not Men?" that really seems to get what we are all about.
"Playboy ... set a tone of cheerfully mixed company and sleek cosmopolitanism," Zobenica writes at one point, to which we add "and we still do!" Zobenica also does a nice job of decoding our, ahem, competitors, referring them to "laddie Neverland" where the residents refuse to grow up. Well, we couldn’t possibly comment, except to say that it’s nice to see somebody appreciating what we’re doing.
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Comments on this entry:
I agree. I was impressed by The Atlantic's article. The writer essentially said something I've thought for a long time. Hefner may not be religious, but the Methodism of his youth — with its continual striving for self-improvement — has been an important angle of Playboy from its beginning.
It says that to live the good life, to attract the mate you want, to enjoy life, you should be conversant in politics and art, you should want to present yourself at the best and you should want the other person(s) in your life to be at their best. What results is a great competition and meeting of adults. What the "lad" magazines present is an escape from all that, which just happens to coincide with the move in many quarters to downgrade the importance and value of male behavior and attitudes (which was explained in a recent Playboy Forum article much better than I'm doing it here).
In short, I agree.