Written by Mamy Mbaye
This time last year, my final semester of college was just coming to an end and I had been juggling three of the most time consuming projects I have ever taken up. The first two were my theses, which I had to complete in order to receive my bachelor’s degree in History and International Relations. The last was the most daunting of all: job search.
As an international student, coming from a Senegalese background, I faced some very strict visa deadlines to adhere to if I wanted to stay; I had 60 days from my graduation date to find a job that was related to my studies. Although I felt that countdown intensely, I was much more wrapped up in my academic endeavors than my job search. My history thesis focused on beauty practices within Brazilian womens’ lives and the integral role those practices played in Brazilian society. More broadly, I learned about the beauty ideals that societies subscribe to, which then have the potential to become a significant part of their national identities.
After spending a semester in Rio de Janeiro in 2017, surrounded by women who are routinely called the most beautiful in the world, I knew there was more to their beauty rituals than met the eye. For that reason, I spent the summer before senior year dividing my time between gathering oral histories in Brazil and interning at a booming beauty startup in New York City. Both of these experiences made me acutely aware of how much power beauty holds within both the Brazilian and American contexts.
Throughout this process, I became more and more interested in the entities that influence those ideals and culture overall, two big ones being government and media. The latter became a focal point for me. I remain fascinated by the interplay of culture and media — how media continues both to reflect the society I live in and shape it in subtle and drastic ways.
I got the opportunity to speak with Human Resources at Playboy through a friend the summer following my graduation. At first, I was very apprehensive. Growing up in Africa, Europe, and Oceania, Playboy and any brand heavily oriented toward sex did not have a major presence in my childhood. Although I had never picked up a copy of the magazine and did not understand the scope of Playboy’s business, I held many preconceived notions about the brand and what I assumed would be its office culture (probably fratty, probably a denigrating place to be for a black African woman). Most importantly, I could not make up my mind as to whether my feminism could align with what I believed the brand stood for.
The conflict I was experiencing was not dissimilar from the one I felt when I first started my project on beauty practices in Brazil. I remember thinking that the large number of Brazilian women electing for cosmetic surgeries must be closely linked to societal pressures enforced by their male counterparts. To my surprise, after conducting several interviews with various women of diverse backgrounds in Rio, it was clear to me that most of them were not pressured by the men in their lives to make these decisions; they viewed these alterations as a part of their larger health and wellness practices. As the shock subsided, I realized how little agency I’d assumed these women had.
With regard to Playboy, the idea that images of nude women were consumed by an overwhelmingly male audience made me uneasy. I had trouble seeing how the magazine could be progressive and still invite the objectification of women.
So before going into the informational call, I created a mini-research assignment for myself. While I was not able to find answers to some of those greater philosophical questions, I tried my best to be impartial and dig up as much as I could about Playboy. I found out that Darine Stern, an African-American model, was featured on the cover of Playboy long before other magazines, like Vogue, made moves to become more inclusive. I also learned that the TV shows Playboy’s Penthouse and Playboy After Dark risked losing large viewership in the South by doubling down on their choice to feature guests of color. Even so, after becoming familiar with the brand’s activist roots and the nuances to its multiple controversies, I remained unsure prior to talking with Playboy.
This initial conversation focused on Playboy’s current direction. Even though there was no position open at the time for which I could see myself as a qualified candidate, the possibility of joining the company became more and more appealing. The conversation that followed was with my now-manager, whose honesty regarding her own qualms prior to joining Playboy a few months earlier helped put me at ease. She too had felt the need to ask questions about the brand’s willingness to think critically about its past as it continued to move forward. Still, I wanted to make sure that, even in my potential role here (at the time, I was discussing a research internship on the brand team), I would be able to voice my opinions.
Following a few more internship interviews, to my surprise I was offered a full-time position on the brand team to conduct a research project that would result in a database tracing Playboy’s history within its four primary editorial themes: Equality, Speech, Gender & Sexuality and Pleasure. The project sounded exciting, but it also instilled a fear in me that I might be put in the difficult position of whitewashing a nuanced history to fit the brand’s current endeavors. While that feeling could not have been further from the truth I experienced, my college years had fostered a justifiable skepticism of brands jumping on the diversity and inclusivity bandwagon.
My first week at Playboy exposed me to the fast-paced nature of things here. Only three days in, Playboy White House Correspondent Brian Karem sued the Trump administration, which had suspended his press pass just days earlier. In an effort to help Karem and contextualize the Playboy-backed suit for the public, I was asked to prepare a brief recounting Playboy’s decades-long activism in the fight for First Amendment rights. The assignment’s quick turnaround forced me to give myself another crash course on Playboy’s history. It was nerve-racking — and thrilling. In gathering this information, several aspects of Playboy’s culture became clear to me. We had as many hands on deck to help as we needed, and any team that could possibly have useful information reached out to offer their help. I began to see just how wide-ranging of a conversation and meticulous of a process went into deciding what to include in this brief. It was effectively becoming one more way of refining our stance on this issue today.
Now, a few months later, my work has extended to other components of the business. The research I’ve been doing has led me down so many avenues I never knew I’d find in Playboy’s history. Each of the departments I’ve interacted with devotes a similar attention to the subtleties of the topics we deal with in our day-to-day. I’m proud to say that in my time here we won the suit against the Trump Administration, we’ve worked to provide more representation of sex workers and adult stars in our mainstream channels, we’ve developed plans to reup our decades-long commitments to cannabis advocacy and we’re continuing to resurface legacy franchises in new and innovative ways.
A year ago, I knew Playboy only as an older brand whose general reputation I regarded skeptically. Now it has become a brand I’ve loved working for. I am inspired by the way we are actively grappling with concepts that society at large confronts and, in some cases, dismisses. In recent months, our team led brainstorms on the future of the Playmate franchise and actively questioned how we can adapt its essence to a modern context. Inside the office doors, I’ve heard countless conversations regarding the complexities of female nudity and objectification and the responsibilities that accompany our role in society. These issues do not have straightforward answers. But knowing that Playboy is taking them on in a meaningful and dedicated way helps me believe not only in our mission, but in the potential for legacy brands like ours to evolve in tandem with the culture.
My working at Playboy may have felt like an unlikely pairing at first, but as I am preparing for my one-year work authorization to come to an end, I am excited to bring what I’ve learned in my time at Playboy to Columbia University, where I will be pursuing a masters’ degree in Global Thought. And most of all, I’m proud to have seen the small ways in which my work, from that initial brief for Karem to reimagining Playmates, has impacted culture at large.
