Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Provocateur, Patriot
Although largely taken for granted in the 21st century, the right to freely express and disseminate ideas, beliefs, and values — especially those considered controversial — is one that has been fought for ardently by several key players throughout our nation’s history. Perhaps even less acknowledged, however, is the role that Hugh Hefner played in realizing the full potential of this essential liberty. Since the era of obscenity that began with Anthony Comstock and the act created in his name in 1873, Americans’ freedom of expression as acknowledged in the United States Constitution has been particularly contentious. It is for his defense of all forms of expression that Hugh Hefner is remembered as a champion of free speech.
By pushing the limits of what had traditionally been considered obscene with his hallmark publication, Playboy, Hugh Hefner challenged both the legal and cultural constraints on the protections provided by the first amendment, thus contributing to the proliferation of previously censored material. By fighting to expand the power of the first amendment to include pornographic content, Hugh Hefner forever altered the American public’s conception of obscenity, and in doing so, redefined and exalted sexuality and gender in America.
Hefner’s struggle in achieving this liberation, however, is not to be understated. By successfully challenging and overcoming the obscenity laws first instituted by Anthony Comstock in 1873, Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine redefined the meaning and implications of obscenity in the United States. Quickly after its launch in 1953, Playboy faced several legal challenges due to its provocative content. In 1955 — emboldened by a 1950 statute that granted the postmaster general the authority to confiscate material considered to be objectionable — Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield refused to deliver copies of Playboy magazine on the grounds that it was obscene.
Not to be deterred, Hugh Hefner sued the Post Office, and, in addition to gaining the right to utilize the mail service, was awarded $100,000 in damages. In November 1958, the Post Office once again attempted to restrict the distribution of Playboy by banning it entirely from the mailing system, justifying its actions by condemning the “lewd” values and images it perpetuated, most notably, the notorious centerfold nudes. Nevertheless, the measure once again proved futile. In combination with the issuance of a restraining order placed against the Post Office itself — a decision that had the effect of forbidding the Post Office from taking any restrictive actions against Playboy for at least five days — a panel of federal judges ensured the continued distribution of Playboy despite its socially questionable content.
This decision marked a considerable victory both for Hugh Hefner and for the freedom of speech, for less than a year before, in Roth v. United States, Samuel Roth was tried and convicted for the distribution of “obscene, lascivious, lewd, and filthy” content through the U.S. Postal Office, a charge remarkably similar to that brought against Hugh Hefner and Playboy. Although Hugh Hefner was a pioneer in liberating the press from the constraints of obscenity, his actions, as demonstrated by the failed efforts of Samuel Roth, did not occur in a vacuum.
The change in sentiment between Roth’s conviction and Hefner’s success in less than a year’s time was demonstrative of a significant shift in the court’s opinion of obscenity, and represented a monumental victory for the proponents of free speech and expression. Up until 1957, courts had been deferring to the anachronistic model of obscenity as defined in Regina v. Hicklin. While the case itself originated in England in 1868, it functioned as a guideline for defining obscenity in the United States for almost a century.
The Hicklin standard regarded obscenity as anything with the capacity “to deprave or corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall.” Reflecting on this sentiment in the majority decision of yet another free speech case regarding obscenity in February, 1957, Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter in Butler v. Michigan said of obscenity and its antiquated definition that, “This enactment is to reduce the adult population of Michigan to reading only what is fit for children.” Armed with these judicial successes and protected by the courts against the confiscation of Playboy by the Post Office, Hugh Hefner “defeated this attempt to censor.” While far from over, Hefner’s victory — occurring in tandem with several other similar cases of the time — continued to push the limit of first amendment rights in the United States.
By 1959, Playboy had already shaken the sexually conservative public to its core, altering the nature of gender and sexuality in American culture. By blatantly and successfully challenging the legal constraints on what could and could not be published, Hugh Hefner redefined the tastes of a generation, popularizing sexual images that, prior to their postwar liberation, had been reserved for hushed parlors and smoking rooms. As a result of its proliferation in the media, Playboy served to normalize and even empower sexually promiscuous behavior in women in a “quasi-feminist” way, while simultaneously quelling the discomfort of a “feminized” postwar male identity. In The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies, author Kinohi Nishikawa refers to Hugh Hefner’s publication in the late fifties as:
Among the handful of periodicals central to any narrative history of twentieth-century American magazines. And it is among even more select company if the aim of such a history were to account for consumers’ taste formation in the postwar era.
Through publishing content that had previously been considered irredeemably lewd, Hugh Hefner offered an alternative to the strict gender roles that had defined the early fifties and the decades that preceded it. Unlike the traditional image of manhood defined by acts of valor, strength, and bravery as articulated by other publications of the time, Hugh Hefner proffered the bachelor life. Defined by relaxation, style, jazz, and sex, this new, more relaxed image of masculinity was of course accompanied by an equally radical vision of femininity, one that ran counter to cultural norms of the time.
While arguments can, and have been made about the exploitative nature of Playboy and its slightly misogynistic undertones, the depiction of sexual interactions between men and women in Playboy saw the relationship as one of equality, not dominance, a relatively new understanding of sexual partnerships at the time. “The typical Playboy guy,” wrote Jon Zobenica in a 2007 article for The Atlantic, “wasn’t complete without a cool splash of patriarchalism, but it’s just as certain that [his] girlfriend didn’t threaten him.” The “potential for empowerment” in the “feminine sexuality” so blatantly expressed in Playboy provided a means for female expression outside of the constraints of marriage.
In addition to the values espoused by the images in Playboy, namely the need of men to find “women of [their] own social and economic rank,” Hugh Hefner’s publication regularly touted feminist issues in its editorials, and was a vocal proponent of women’s right to choose. This, in combination with its rejection of the “Victorian double standard” that had defined the sexual relationship between men and women in decades prior, confirms Playboy’s position as a socially radical and culturally transformative publication, despite its regular dismissal by literary “purists.”
Beginning with his defiance of the Post Master General in 1955 and culminating with his Supreme Court victory in 2000, Hefner has spent the better part of his life fighting to defend the right to free expression. Using the language of the Constitution to his advantage, Hugh Hefner, tangentially with other anti-obscenity publishers of the time, was able to contradict the limitations on the press’ freedom by repeatedly pushing the limit of acceptability. The subsequent liberation of the media, referred to as the “end of obscenity” by author Charles Rembar, forever altered the relationship between the media, the government, and the American people. The liberalizing effects of Hugh Hefner’s advocacy worked to transform the relationship that the American people had with sexuality and gender for generations to come.
Hugh Hefner’s political impact on the United States resulted in the full realization of Americans’ right to be free from government censorship. His social impact would be the first of many steps in the fight to realize the right of Americans’ to be free from sexual repression and misconceived notions of gender.
