Circular Emotions

Playgirl Closure Sparks Deep Thoughts

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Colleen Kane spent many years editing Playgirl, and she’s taking the penis-loving magazine’s folding very hard. And deep – especially the lingering tension between the magazine’s lady-centric mission and gay-tinged image:

I disagree that only gay men would ever want to look at pictures of naked men. This was a half-baked conjecture I heard over and over when I met new people and the subject of my job came up. To me it came off as a careless denial of women’s sexuality; it was equivalent to saying that women don’t fantasize.

I’ve also wondered if there weren’t some parallels between Playgirl‘s struggle to find its identity and readership and the developing lack of cohesiveness among feminists, as the ranks divided into second and third waves, and the waves subdivided with different opinions about sex, porn, and, well, fun, and perhaps a greater proportion of women don’t identify as feminist.

And, with Playgirl‘s death, so too we must mourn feminism and all its cultural byproducts, like Playgirl. Why, cruel God, why?!

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