Hugh Hefner obituary

Playboy founder, who has died aged 91, claimed he wanted to help liberate women as sexual beings – but critics decry a legacy of objectificationOne evening in 1967, Hugh Hefner, who has died aged 91, appeared on a TV special broadcast from the Playboy Mansion’s library. Puffing on his customary pipe, and flanked by Harvard theologian Harvey Cox and conservative editor William F Buckley, the billionaire porn magazine magnate and American men’s titillator-in-chief argued that the religious basis for morality was obsolete.If America was to fulfil its manifest destiny and its citizens were to genuinely enjoy life, it needed to be liberated sexually. This, he said, was what Playboy Enterprises, of which he was the CEO and visionary founder, was patriotically supplying. In this, arguably, Hefner was fulfilling his mother’s wish that he become a missionary. True, his work involved more pool parties, voluptuous women pillow-fighting and wearisome boasts about sexual prowess (“I have slept with thousands of women, and they all still like me,” he told Esquire magazine in 2002) than previous missionaries found necessary, but he always imagined himself to be a proselytiser for hedonistic anti-puritanism. Related: Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine, dies aged 91 Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2017-09-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
News tagged with: #playboy enterprises #playboy magazine

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