The Playboy Perpetrator Revealed
By Hunter Baker, Associate Professor of Political Science and University Fellow
Mar 21, 2022 -
The accusations that effectively ended Harvey Weinstein’s long career in Hollywood and, more important, launched the #metoo movement hit during October of 2017. It is notable that Hugh Hefner, the prophet and practitioner of hedonism as the founder of the Playboy media empire, died in September of the same year just before the storm began to rage.
It may be the case, however, that Hefner’s place in the relevant history will not be forgotten. The Arts and Entertainment Network (A&E) has been airing a documentary series on the lives of women adversely impacted by their participation in the Playboy enterprise. Several episodes in, it seems clear that the legacy of life at the Playboy mansion and in the old city clubs was devastation for many.
Hefner built Playboy in two ways. First, he promoted a philosophy of pleasure aimed directly at toppling Judeo-Christian attitudes toward sex and marriage. Second, he offered a lifestyle and various commercial products supporting that lifestyle. Although he was a pornographer by any description, his works in pornography were more tasteful than what competitors delivered. There was a time when the articles published in Playboy, along with the centerfolds, had significant status in American society. Major thinkers wrote for the magazine. Jimmy Carter confessed his sin of lust in its pages for a serious profile. William F. Buckley wrote for Playboy for years before finally submitting his resignation in frustration that it appeared essentially no one was reading his work. He concluded that his attempt to influence the readership of Playboy for the good was an exercise in futility. Buckley realized that while the pay was sizeable and the potential audience was large, writing for Hefner’s publication just allowed pornography to hide beneath an illusionary veneer of arts and letters.
The A&E documentary is revealing. Hefner was both an evangelist for his Playboy philosophy of life (maximum pleasure, minimum guilt, and minimum commitment) and its foremost beneficiary. Almost as though he were a teenage boy equipped with a multi-million dollar fortune and zero restraint, it appears he largely stayed inside the Playboy mansion, wore pajamas all day and night, consumed endless Pepsis, red licorice, and M&M’s, played board games, cards, pinball, did drugs and facilitated their use, and cultivated a long series of women for participation in shocking sexual degradation. The extent of that degradation becomes clear in the course of watching the documentary and listening to participants, mostly Hefner’s “girlfriends” and assorted enablers, describing what they endured as the price for staying with their rich and famous benefactor.
More than anything else, the documentary functions as a voice for the women who felt manipulated and controlled by the Playboy kingpin. Their stories include tales of compulsory plastic surgery, being trapped in “a cycle of gross things,” knowing that there was always a “mountain of revenge porn” hanging over their heads, being pitted against one another, and being plied with drugs. One of his more recent “girlfriends” (as he called them) described Hefner as being “uncancellable,” which was a result of his eventual victory over even the objections of feminists. They went from being his chief critics to being allies of a sort because of his stalwart support of abortion rights.
Maybe the most effective voice in the series is former Hefner girlfriend Sondra Theodore, who went from being a promising young woman who taught Bible study in the 1970’s, to being part of Hefner’s revolving harem. She came to view Hefner as a kind of vampire who sucked the life out of young girls. Though Hefner was always an exponent of what he proclaimed should be a “healthy sex life,” Theodore said there was nothing healthy about intimacy with Hefner. “He took it too far,” she said. She felt like a ringmaster involved in a circus fueled by transgression and run for Hefner’s benefit. All the while, she labored under the belief that Hefner really loved her and was some kind of a romantic, but the illusion simply could not be maintained. She said that eventually, no drug could take her far enough away.
The documentary includes Hefner interviews with a number of major media figures. One asks him about his morality. Hefner claims to be “the most moral millionaire he knows.” Another asks him about Jesus Christ. Hefner declares, “Our views would be very similar.” When asked to elaborate, Hefner adds, “He forgave the whores.” As Sondra Theodore shares her story, she expresses her belief that Hefner (now dead a few years) knows she is telling the truth and doesn’t like it. She adds that wherever he is, she “doesn’t think it’s a good place.” It’s clearly her belief that Hefner hasn’t escaped the reckoning due his victims through his death.
This column originally appeared in the March 21st edition of World Opinion online
