In the early '70s, Playboy was feeling pressure from Bob Guccione's Penthouse magazine and Hustler, Larry Flynt's pornographic spank rag that launched just a year earlier in July 1974. Hustler and Penthouse were quickly creeping on Playboy's dominant market-share of male readership for "one-handed magazines," to quote a term coined by Tom Wolfe. By November 1975, all three competitors were actively engaged in an editorial "Pubic War" that pushed the limits of how much pubic hair could be displayed on the cover models of each respectable magazine.
Playboy's November 1975 cover with Patricia Margot Mcclain visibly touching her genitalia was the high water mark of Playboy's engagement in the so-called "Pubic Wars." It's arguably the most risque photo every published on a Playboy cover. At the risk of losing readers, advertising dollars, and taking on the character of a smut magazine, Hefner committed to keeping Playboy a classy publication shortly after the November issue went to press.
Dorothy Stratten - August 1979
Her death, arguably, brought this Playmate more fame than her spread did as her life has been the story of at least two movies in the early 80s. Dorothy Stratten, Miss August 1979 and 1980’s Playmate of the Year, had a surprisingly short life since she was murdered by her husband, Paul Snider, at the tender age of 20. Stratten has the dubious honor of being one of the youngest Playmates to have died – a case of the good die young?
Controversy:
Playboy's first coed college pictorial was a "Girls of the Big Ten" feature in 1977. Two years later, the magazine went to each campus in the Ivy League for a 30-photo "Women of the Ivies" spread. Needless to say, it didn't sit well with campus feminists groups and administrations. According to a syndicated New York Times article, one feminist at Princeton was even quoted saying, "I don't think Playboy should exist at all... I don't think it should have been able to advertise to interview women for their pictorial, because their profits are built on the exploitation of women."
The feature especially ticked-off Ellen Goodman, the Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist whose laurels include cum laude at Radcliffe College and a Shorenstein Fellowship at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Goodman scolded the coeds from elite, top-tier universities in her nationally syndicated column, bad-mouthing the girls for showing their birthday suits in Playboy. She wrote, "In the real world women who pose for Playboy do not grow up to work for the State Department or to be tenured professors. In the real world women seen nationally in beige satin undies are not taken seriously."
In an interesting twist of fate, Goodman's rant about a few semi-nude pics jeopardizing Ivy League career prospects couldn't have been more wrong. In 1995, The Yale Herald caught up with two women who represented Yale in the original 1979 issue. The reporter discovered that one model, Wendy Brewer, was now the vice president of a major international bank. Another continued on to Harvard Medical School after graduation.
Posting all this takes a lot of time and effort. The pics are greatly appreciated. I'm quite certain the first picture of a naked woman I ever saw is contained somewhere in here...
Great thread idea and effort too. I recognize a few of the beauties from the 70's pics. They were among the porn stash I used to raid from my Dad's collection. Always had to be extra careful no errant shots landed on the pages. I am sure there will be many more I recognize from the early 80's. Thanks.
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1972
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